Apple earnings report shocked analysts by topping the company’s formal revenue guidance for the holiday quarter by $9.3 billion and analysts’ revenue estimates by $7.2 billion. The company reported $46.33 billion in revenue for its fiscal 2012 first quarter, and net profit of $13.06 billion or $13.87 per diluted share. By comparison, in the year-ago […]
Apple earnings report shocked analysts by topping the company’s formal revenue guidance for the holiday quarter by $9.3 billion and analysts’ revenue estimates by $7.2 billion.
The company reported $46.33 billion in revenue for its fiscal 2012 first quarter, and net profit of $13.06 billion or $13.87 per diluted share. By comparison, in the year-ago quarter Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) reported revenue of $26.74 billion and net quarterly profit of $6 billion, or $6.43 per diluted share. Apple said it also raised its gross margin for the quarter to 44.7 percent, up from 38.5 percent year-over-year. Additionally, international sales accounted for 58 percent of the company’s quarterly revenue.
The iPhone and iPad drove Apple’s results. The company said it sold 37.04 million iPhones in the fiscal first quarter of 2012, an increase of 128 percent over the first quarter of 2011. Sales of iPads were up 111 percent from the year-ago quarter to 15.43 million. Mac sales were also up by 26 percent to 5.2 million sales. However, the company’s iPod line slid; it sold 15.4 million iPods, representing a 21 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.
“We’re thrilled with our outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive officer. “Apple’s momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline.”
Brian Marshall, IT hardware and data networking analyst with International Strategy & Investment Group (ISI), called it the “perfect quarter.”
“Before these results, AAPL had beaten its formal guidance by about $3.8 billion and about $1.85 [earnings per share] on average over the past four quarters,” Marshall said in a research note Tuesday.
“However, for the December 2011 quarter, AAPL beat its guidance by about $9.3 billion (or about 25 percent upside on guidance of about $37 billion) and its EPS guidance by about $4.60 (or 50 percent upside on guidance of about $9.30) due to its global pent-up demand for the iPhone 4S and the holiday season. Importantly, the upside surprise on units largely stemmed from the iPhone (about 5 million units of upside at about 37 million) and iPad (about 3.4 million units of upside at about 15.4 million). We estimate these two product families generated about 85 percent of AAPL’s total gross profits. For these reasons, the Dec-11 appears to have culminated into “the perfect quarter” for AAPL, in our view.”
Looking ahead, there seems to be little sign of Apple slowing its pace.
“We are very happy to have generated over $17.5 billion in cash flow from operations during the December quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s chief financial officer. “Looking ahead to the second fiscal quarter of 2012, which will span 13 weeks, we expect revenue of about $32.5 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $8.50.”
A number of analysts have suggested that those numbers are conservative, as is typical of Apple’s guidance. Many raised their price targets for Apple shares in response.
Marshall, who describes Apple’s revenue stream as a recurring one similar to that of a cable company—with iOS “subscribers”—raised his target to $525 from $500. But he wasn’t alone; UBS analyst Maynard Um set a target of $550, Charlie Wolf of Needham Research set a target of $540, Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty has a target of $515 but a “bull case” of $600.
“With minimal “real” competitive threats to AAPL’s major product families in CY12, we believe the outlook for the next four quarters can be characterized as “smooth sailing,” Marshall said. “If something were to go wrong with the story, it would most likely result from idiosyncratic mis-execution on the part of AAPL or a material change in support from the global carrier community. We believe both are unlikely given AAPL’s historical track record of execution and carrier contracts dictating subsidy levels. Therefore, we think the road for the “AAPL cart” is relatively smooth over the next few quarters (e.g., iPad 3 launch in March, iPhone 5 in Sept./Oct., etc.) barring any massive change in component costs.”
According to its latest filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company carries no debt and has $97.6 billion in cash on hand.
Thor Olavsrud is a contributor to InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals.
Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
December 04, 2020
Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 18, 2020
Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
November 10, 2020
FEATURE | By Samuel Greengard,
November 05, 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 02, 2020
How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 29, 2020
Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 23, 2020
The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
October 16, 2020
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
October 07, 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
October 05, 2020
CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
September 25, 2020
Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 25, 2020
Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2020
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
September 22, 2020
NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
September 18, 2020
Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 14, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 13, 2020
IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 11, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality
FEATURE | By James Maguire,
September 09, 2020
Anticipating The Coming Wave Of AI Enhanced PCs
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 05, 2020
The Critical Nature Of IBM’s NLP (Natural Language Processing) Effort
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
August 14, 2020
Thor Olavsrud is a journalist covering data analytics, security, infrastructure, and networking for CIO.com. He's especially interested in companies that use data to transform their business to tackle problems in innovative ways. As a senior writer, his articles focus on practical insights, analysis, and business use cases that can help CIOs and other IT leaders navigate the shifting IT landscape.
Datamation is the leading industry resource for B2B data professionals and technology buyers. Datamation's focus is on providing insight into the latest trends and innovation in AI, data security, big data, and more, along with in-depth product recommendations and comparisons. More than 1.7M users gain insight and guidance from Datamation every year.
Property of TechnologyAdvice. © 2025 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved
Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.
