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By Stephen Nellis
(Reuters) – Apple Inc on Wednesday reported holiday quarter sales and profits that beat Wall Street expectations as the new 5G iPhones helped push phone revenue to a new record and trigger a 57-month increase % of sales in China.
Apple shipped its iPhone 12 lineup several weeks later than usual, but an increased number of models and a new look have attracted demand for upgrades, especially in China. The company also saw strong sales of its Mac laptops and iPads in the quarter, thanks to consumers working, learning and playing from home during the pandemic.
Apple’s revenue for the quarter ended Dec. 26 increased 21 percent to $ 111.44 billion. Earnings per share rose to $ 1.68 from $ 1.25, beating Wall Street targets, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. IPhone sales stood at $ 65.60 billion and broke a record set three years ago. (Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/3prAlRd)
CFO Luca Maestri told investors that revenue growth is likely to accelerate year over year in the current fiscal second quarter and gross margins are likely to be similar to the first quarter rate tax rate of 39.7%. He also said that the company’s service segment revenue faced a difficult comparison to the previous year, when the pandemic increased sales, and the year-over-year growth of the The company’s wearable device segment would slow down.
Apple shares were down 2.6% to $ 138.33 in after-hours trading after the report, but have risen nearly 12% since Jan.15. Apple shares were up 85% from the previous year, compared to 46% for the Nasdaq 100, of which it A component.
“Their challenge is to maintain success to justify the now high-end valuation,” Trip Miller, managing partner of Apple investor Gullane Capital Partners.
Apple, the largest publicly traded company in the United States by market cap with a value of $ 2.4 trillion, flourished during a pandemic that forced it to close several of its stores, but prompted many consumers to buy or upgrade devices.
Apple CEO Tim Cook told Reuters in an interview that the company now has an active installed base of 1.65 billion devices, up from 1.5 billion devices a year ago. Cook also said that Apple now has an installed base of over one billion iPhones, an increase from the 900 million the company recently revealed in 2019.
China has proven to be a strong market for the iPhone, with overall sales rising 57% to $ 21.31 billion.
“We had two of the three best-selling smartphones in urban China,” Cook told Reuters in an interview, adding that “the enhancers in particular set an all-time high in China.”
Mac sales reached $ 8.68 billion. Sales of iPads, services and wearable devices have exceeded Wall Street targets. IPad revenue was $ 8.44 billion and the services business, which includes its new Apple One set of TV, music and cloud storage services, was $ 15.76 billion. of income.
Cook told Reuters that sales of Macs, iPads, and iPhone 12 Pro all faced “supply constraints.” He said that “semiconductors are very tight” but other areas of the supply chain have also contributed to the constraints.
Apple has 620 million paid subscribers on its platform, ahead of its goal of 600 million subscribers by the end of 2020, Cook said.
The services segment also includes sales from the Apple App Store, whose billing practices have become a critical point of contention with the creator of “Fortnite” Epic Games and whose privacy rules have ticked off a public dispute with Facebook Inc.
Apple’s wearable devices and accessories segment, which includes the Apple Watch and AirPods product lines, achieved revenue of $ 12.97 billion. In December, Apple released the AirPods Max, a set of $ 550 on-ear wireless headphones, with shipping dates extending months into the future within hours of the product launch. Cook said AirPods Max shortages could continue into the company’s current fiscal second quarter.
(Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2Mwb7Tr)
(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Subrat Patnaik in Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Peter Henderson)
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