Apple Reports Third Quarter Results

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-reports-third-quarter-results-2012-07-24

by yoda_sl • 14 years ago

74 77 14 years ago

yoda_sl• 14 years ago

From the Press Release: the Company sold 26.0 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 28 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 17.0 million iPads during the quarter, an 84 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 4.0 million Macs during the quarter, a two percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 6.8 million iPods, a 10 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter

jusben13695• 14 years ago

This caught my eye. 26 million iPhones. Galaxy S III just did 10 million in 6 weeks since launch? That's 20 million in a quarter. Assume the iPhone number is a blended number too between older and latest model. So did we just see the first real example of one phone model legitimately challenge the iPhone? The argument was always that Android success was across so many phones. Now is the breaking down? Please don't flame me as hater or fan boy and just help me with the question of whether this is meaningful or flawed.

spearo77• 14 years ago

Is the Galaxy S III number "sold", or "shipped"?

bryne• 14 years ago

A better comparison would be to a quarter introducing a new phone model - Apple sold 37.04 million iPhones in Q1 2012, the fiscal quarter during which the iPhone 4S launched.

taligent2• 14 years ago

Are you seriously comparing the sales for a device just launched (Galaxy S3) with one about to be replaced (iPhone 4S).

Because that would be dumb.

greedo2• 14 years ago

Apple reports sales to consumers; Samsung reports sales to vendors.

joezydeco• 14 years ago

I guess the question is: how many iPhone users are locked in contracts and can't move to another phone at the moment, and would they move to the Galaxy S III if they could?

fallous2• 14 years ago

And how much money did the Galaxy S III earn on those 10 million sales vs iPhone?

I'm no Apple fanboy, but it always amuses me that the Android boosters talk unit numbers while Apple continues their "BMW" revenues on product. Congrats, you sold 100 Beetles... our sales of 1 BMW generated more profit.

smackfu2• 14 years ago

Down 5% in after hours trading, although not sure if that is before or after results.

pathdependent• 14 years ago

The drop came after the results were reported.

_delirium• 14 years ago

Looks like after, due to being lower than the average analyst expectations... had been predicting $37b revenue, vs. actual report of $35b.

smackfu2• 14 years ago

They also missed the EPS by a dollar ($9.32 vs $10.35)

MichaelApproved• 14 years ago

A move like that, especially after hours, is almost always news (earnings in this case) related.

goatforce52• 14 years ago

The amount of the first dividend in a while has been set.

"Apple's Board of Directors has declared a cash dividend of $2.65 per share of the Company's common stock. The dividend is payable on August 16, 2012, to stockholders of record as of the close of business on August 13, 2012."

vijayr• 14 years ago

Almost 43% gross margin, for a (mostly) hardware company !!

endlessvoid94• 14 years ago

I don't really understand how people keep calling Apple a hardware company. Yes, they make their own hardware (in some cases) but on the record, repeatedly, everyone at Apple says, all the time, that they treat themselves as a software company.

taligent2• 14 years ago

Says people who probably work in the software areas.

The fact is Apple is a PRODUCT company. Meaning they do the software, hardware and most importantly everything in between the two.

mikeash2• 14 years ago

To call Apple a hardware or a software company is to miss the point entirely. Is Ford a wheel company or an engine company?

jonknee• 14 years ago

Because that's what they sell... Look at the revenue figures. Yes they make two operating systems, but they produce little direct revenue (iOS updates are free, the next OS X version is $20).

velodrome• 14 years ago

Apple is a platform company. Would you call facebook a hardware company if it came out with a phone to help propagate its platform?

Apple (or Microsoft) sells a platform. Samsung sells hardware. Intuit sells software.

goatforce52• 14 years ago

Oh... also buried in the release - Mountain Lion is released tomorrow:

"We've also just updated the entire MacBook line, will release Mountain Lion tomorrow and will be launching iOS 6 this Fall. We are also really looking forward to the amazing new products we've got in the pipeline."

asdfdsa1234• 14 years ago

Gross revenue and margin rose. Slow iPhone sales were the only weak spot in the report, which is unsurprising given the age of the current model.

swalsh• 14 years ago

The current model is less then a year old, I think the problem is people are waiting for 4g.

ceejayoz• 14 years ago

With iPhones, "less than a year old" means "the new one's about to come out". My two year plan expired a few months back and I'm holding out for iPhone 5, and I suspect a lot of iPhone 4 purchasers are in the same boat.

CamperBob2• 14 years ago

Not really, as it's only a minor refresh of the original iPhone 4 from most users' point of view.

jusben13695• 14 years ago

ATT mentioned in their earnings call that they've made it harder to upgrade by extending the amount of time you must wait to be able to upgrade. They did it to boost earnings and it helped. That might also explain the softness in the iPhone numbers.

fpgeek2• 14 years ago

Not entirely. The iPad ASP drifting downwards isn't great, especially with an "iPad Mini" rumored to be on the horizon.

mladenkovacevic• 14 years ago

I guess this week would be a good time to buy some AAPL and wait for the iPhone 5 frenzy.

jpxxx2• 14 years ago

TL;DR: Exceeded guidance, no blowout.

Mac sales are static, overall iPhone sales softening as the lineup ages, iPads surging, iPod continues to dwindle, miscellaneous sales remain miscellaneous.

+ stock buyback next year + dividends being issued as expected + China sales exploding

So: a quiet quarter. New Mac OS released tomorrow. Yay!

hristov• 14 years ago

You forgot another one -- estimates missed.

thom• 14 years ago

Made up analyst numbers are made up.

jpxxx2• 14 years ago

While a tragic piece of news for stock market analysts, that's not Apple news. :3

InclinedPlane• 14 years ago

If you can make $8 billion profit in a single quarter and for some reasons the estimates where higher, that's a problem with the estimators, not with your business. In 2012 on the planet Earth averaging nearly $4 million in profit every single hour of every single day is tremendous business.

astrodust2• 14 years ago

They missed their whisper number, not their guidance.

Steko• 14 years ago

From Jacqui Cheng's liveblog of the call on ars:

Q: Can you talk about what your conversations are like with carriers in terms of pricing, subsidies, etc.?

Tim Cook: (laughing out loud)

I don't want to talk about specifics with carriers, but generally I'd say our role is to make the very best smartphone in the world that has an incredible user experience that's far superior than anything else, that customers want to use every day at the end of the day, carriers want to provide what customers want to buy the most important thing for Apple is to continue making the best products in the world. we are maniacally focused on it

jsz0• 14 years ago

I'm surprised the Mac grew at all given how late in the quarter they updated the notebooks plus no desktop updates at all. I guess it just proves how little people really care about spec sheets anymore -- or maybe they made it all up at the end of the quarter with the new notebooks?

jusben13695• 14 years ago

I think this is a great concise view on the numbers. 23% revenue growth vs Google 21%.... http://www.splatf.com/2012/07/apple-jun12earnings-charts/

thechut2• 14 years ago

What a bunch of fanboys...

They missed their estimates and stocks tumbled 6% in after hours trading. That's $33, more than 10 times the dividends they will be paying on that $8B profit.

polycom2• 14 years ago

How did they miss their estimates?

btilly5• 14 years ago

The market was trading on a belief that Apple's numbers would be about $2 billion higher than they were. Therefore the stock will fall as people digest the number and re-evaluate where Apple should be trading.

Since they reported numbers that were in the neighborhood of 6% below what was expected, their stock fell about 6%. Which is a pretty large drop.

thechut2• 14 years ago

"Apple said its earnings per share were $9.32 on revenue of $35 billion. Analysts polled by Thomson One Analytics predicted earnings per share of $10.36 on revenue of $37.19 billion."

Via http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_21147940/apples-...

It doesn't matter how much money you actually make when you are as big as Apple, it matters what you make compared to what people (analysts) think and expect you to make.

Edit: Put wrong quarter numbers, fixed.

dandelany• 14 years ago

You say this as if it means Apple has done something wrong, or that they've somehow underperformed. The fact is this: they issued guidance for their profits for this quarter, and beat their own guidance. Third-party analysts issued their own estimates, which were significantly higher, and the market responded to those estimates by overvaluing the stock. When the quarterly results were issued, it turned out that the analysts were wrong, and the market, which had "bought the rumor", promptly corrected to a more realistic valuation. I fail to see how a third party being over-optimistic is Apple's fault.

People tend to assume that when a stock loses a significant amount of value in a short period of time, a company has done something wrong. This is a great example of why this is not the case - speculators wrongly assumed that Apple would be even more ultra-profitable than they actually are, and overvalued the stock. The resulting correction was healthy.

suprgeek• 14 years ago

Inspite of being the most valuable company on Earth and making an amazing profit by any metric - you still lose value (stock price) if you come in under "analyst" estimates.

The relentless march of capital may be increasingly going off the rails.

AlisdairO2• 14 years ago

It makes perfect sense. If you're widely expected to make a lot of money, people will price that into your stock. If you make a lot minus n, you're doing less well than the analysts expected, and so your stock is overvalued.

The failing here is not that the stock price dropped on results that were worse than the market expected, it's that the market expected too much in the first place, causing the stock to become overvalued.

ubernostrum2• 14 years ago

If it happened once, sure.

The thing is, analysts have shown, historically, that either:

1) They are really, really bad at their jobs to have such a consistent track record of producing poor estimates for Apple, or

2) They are really, really good at their jobs, but the jobs they're doing aren't the jobs we think they're doing.

Apple Reports Third Quarter Results

Related Stories