Apple Q3: BOOM!
by John Paczkowski
Posted on July 21, 2009 at 1:35 PM PT
To see Peter Kafka’s liveblog of Apple’s Q3 Earnings Call, click here.
The economy is in recession, consumer spending is down and the PC market is in the worst decline since the Great Dark Times of 2001.
And Apple is doing just fine.
After market close Tuesday, the company reported earnings that crushed the Street’s estimates into a fine iPod-white dust. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters estimated that Apple (AAPL) would earn $1.16 per share on $8.16 billion in sales. Instead, it earned $1.35 on $8.34 billion for a profit of $1.23 billion.
Apple shipped 2.6 million Macs in the quarter just as NPD forecast and it sold 5.2 million iPhones. iPod sales were down seven percent to 10.2 million. Gross margin was 36.3 percent, up 34.8 percent year-over-year, and international sales accounted for 44 percent of revenue during the period. For its fourth quarter, Apple expects to earn $1.18 to $1.23 per share on revenue of $8.7 billion to $8.9 billion.
“We’re making our most innovative products ever and our customers are responding,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement. “We’re thrilled to have sold over 5.2 million iPhones during the quarter and users have downloaded more than 1.5 billion applications from our App Store in its first year.”
Clearly, business is good in Cupertino, recession be damned. Apple shares rose two percent to 154.68 in after-hours trading on the news.
