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Apple’s latest record quarter: Why Apple loves China but hates sales figures
It’s another record quarter as a part of a record fiscal year for Apple. The revenue was nearly $63 billion, the profit more than $14 billion, and for the year Apple generated $265 billion in revenue and nearly $60 billion in profit. It’s the company’s eighth straight quarter of revenue growth, and that growth has accelerated every one of those quarters. This is a healthy company; you couldn’t find a healthier one if you tried.
Yes, Apple’s stock is getting hit because its guidance—the amount of money it expects to make during the current quarter—is actually slightly below what Wall Street analysts were expecting. For the record, the revenue Apple has guided to—between $89 and $93 billion—would be the most revenue Apple has ever generated in a quarter, and somewhere between 1 and 5 percent growth. In other words, get ready for another record Apple quarter, because this one’s shaping up to be huge.
As always, it’s worth reading between the lines of the federally-mandated financial disclosure tables and listening to the specifics of the company’s ritual phone call with financial analysts to see what else is on the company’s mind. Here are a few things that I noticed.