Tuesday, January 27th 2015
Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results
Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2015 first quarter ended December 27, 2014. The Company posted record quarterly revenue of $74.6 billion and record quarterly net profit of $18 billion, or $3.06 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $57.6 billion and net profit of $13.1 billion, or $2.07 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 39.9 percent compared to 37.9 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 65 percent of the quarter's revenue.
The results were fueled by all-time record revenue from iPhone and Mac sales as well as record performance of the App Store. iPhone unit sales of 74.5 million also set a new record.
"We'd like to thank our customers for an incredible quarter, which saw demand for Apple products soar to an all-time high," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO. "Our revenue grew 30 percent over last year to $74.6 billion, and the execution by our teams to achieve these results was simply phenomenal."
"Our exceptional results produced EPS growth of 48 percent over last year, and $33.7 billion in operating cash flow during the quarter, an all-time record," said Luca Maestri, Apple's CFO."We spent over $8 billion on our capital return program, bringing total returns to investors to almost $103 billion, over $57 billion of which occurred in just the last 12 months."
Apple is providing the following guidance for its fiscal 2015 second quarter:
The results were fueled by all-time record revenue from iPhone and Mac sales as well as record performance of the App Store. iPhone unit sales of 74.5 million also set a new record.
"We'd like to thank our customers for an incredible quarter, which saw demand for Apple products soar to an all-time high," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO. "Our revenue grew 30 percent over last year to $74.6 billion, and the execution by our teams to achieve these results was simply phenomenal."
"Our exceptional results produced EPS growth of 48 percent over last year, and $33.7 billion in operating cash flow during the quarter, an all-time record," said Luca Maestri, Apple's CFO."We spent over $8 billion on our capital return program, bringing total returns to investors to almost $103 billion, over $57 billion of which occurred in just the last 12 months."
Apple is providing the following guidance for its fiscal 2015 second quarter:
- revenue between $52 billion and $55 billion
- gross margin between 38.5 percent and 39.5 percent
- operating expenses between $5.4 billion and $5.5 billion
- other income/(expense) of $350 million
- tax rate of 26.3 percent
34 Comments on Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results
I mean when you blew all that money on your gaming rig, what were you buying?
So you're comparing apples and oranges...
As for me, I do think they're too expensive. I only use a Apple laptop at work because we're an Apple shop, a decision that I cannot change so I roll with it (even more so since I get to use a Mac but not pay for it). If you're not gaming, Apple makes a good, solid product. Although if I want a server, or to play a game, or have a lot of compute power or storage, that's kind of outside a typical use case for an Apple product. So you need to make sure you're buying something for what you need it for and you should never buy Apple for those cases. For a general purpose laptop though, that price premium might be worth not having to deal with a lot of issues with things like updates and drivers because it's so tightly controlled by Apple.
There are upsides and downsides, no doubt, but it would be a little dumb to say that Apple doesn't try to build a quality and reliable product because that is one of the biggest selling points to Apple products, even if you don't care about such things being a power user.
Regards,
Apple does what a lot of people want and they're willing to pay a bit more to be assured that it will "just work". Apple has a history of doing a reasonable job of making things "just work". It's far from perfect, but Consumer Reports has reported Apple products to have the highest customer service satisfaction rating of the large tech hardware companies for many years. I don't know if that has changed recently, but I doubt it.
Apple products are not designed for the enthusiast gamer market. I'm sure the company realized the margins are too thin to be worthwhile. Plus, Apple has been boneheaded when it comes to gaming for a long time. Apple doesn't "get" gaming and never really has — probably because people reacted to its GUI machines like the Lisa and first Mac as if they were toys because of the mouse. Apple's philosophy was that the CPU should do all the work, unlike game-friendly systems such as the NES and Amiga that would offload work to dedicated graphics and sound chips. The only exception is the IIgs, but that was Woz's vision and Apple hobbled it to prevent it from competing with Macintosh.
Apple has given lipservice to gamers at times over the years but its constant churning out of incompatible operating system revisions, non-expandable tight form factor hardware, and lack of DirectX are all too tough for most gaming companies to deal much with. Thunderbolt might help things (external Thunderbolt GPUs), but Apple's focus is on mobile and its constant operating system changes will continue to create incompatibilities that gaming companies are unlikely to bother with.
Even the Apple II had cruddy graphics and sound so gamers bought Commodores and Ataris. Apple does get the professional content creation market and has been targeting it ever since it transitioned its business from home finance (VisiCalc, AppleWorks) + schools. It also targets the upscale non-enterprise non-gamer individual with products like the original iMac, the Mac LC, and the 5K iMac.
In Australia alone their tax bill is $6 Billion dollars.
That doesn't make them successful or their products better, that makes them liars and cheats.
Of course they are, they refuse to pay tax in the countries the income is earned, therefore increasing profits.
Sounds like a pyramid scheme to me.