The Cupertino company releases quarterly numbers

Oct 21, 2014 06:48 GMT  ·  By

Apple held one of its usual quarterly calls yesterday to discuss the company’s earnings with analysts and investors and reported record-setting iPhone sales, a growing Mac business, and overall higher numbers than Wall Street’s expectations.

In fact, Apple blew past its very own forecast with yesterday’s reported numbers, some of which are available in the press release embedded below. For the full scoop, the company still provides a recording of the call at www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/earningsq414.

Quarterly profit of $8.5 billion / €6.6 billion

With quarterly revenue of $42.1 billion / €32.82 billion and quarterly net profit of $8.5 billion / €6.6 billion, Apple not only zoomed past Wall Street’s estimates, but also its own. By quite a margin.

The company said it sold 39.2 million iPhones, up from 33.8 million moved around the same time last year, 12.3 million iPads (below expectations by about a million units), and 5.52 million Macs, which exceeded expectations and confirmed some interesting changes in the PC sector lately.

iPods sold just 2.6 million units, down 24% from last year’s 3.5 million in Q4. This was expected, as the iPod business has been declining for years. Also worth noting is that Apple has scrapped the iPod segment as a standalone business pillar and threw it on top of the pile of accessories it sells, including the Apple Watch.

“Our fiscal 2014 was one for the record books, including the biggest iPhone launch ever with iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “With amazing innovations in our new iPhones, iPads and Macs, as well as iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, we are heading into the holidays with Apple’s strongest product lineup ever. We are also incredibly excited about Apple Watch and other great products and services in the pipeline for 2015.”

For investors

According to the press release, Apple’s board of directors declared a cash dividend of $0.47 (€0.37) per share of the company’s common stock, payable on November 13, 2014.

“Our strong business performance drove EPS growth of 20 percent and a record $13.3 billion in cash flow from operations in the September quarter,” said Luca Maestri, Apple’s CFO. “We continued to execute aggressively against our capital return program, spending over $20 billion in the quarter and bringing cumulative returns to $94 billion.”

The company estimates to report revenue between $63.5 billion / €49.53 billion and $66.5 billion / €51.85 billion for the first fiscal quarter of 2015.

Show Press Release