Going into the holiday season, Apple has a lot to smile about. Apple today released its earnings report for the recent September quarter, and there’s a lot to be impressed about. Apple posted revenue of $52.6 billion, and earnings per share checked in at $2.07. Prior to Apple reporting revenue results, Wall Street was predicting revenue to come in at $50.7 billion and EPS at $1.87.
In comparison to last year’s performance, Apple posted $46.9 billion revenue, net quarterly profit of $9 billion, and EPS of $1.67, at the same time last year. Saying Apple posting $52.6 billion over last year’s performance is an understatement. The company, while didn’t have a great iPhone 8 launch, is expecting to have a record breaking quarter going into the holidays with the iPhone X.
“We’re happy to report a very strong finish to a great fiscal 2017, with record fourth quarter revenue, year-over-year growth for all our product categories, and our best quarter ever for Services,” Tim Cook said in a press release.
In the recent quarter, Apple managed to sell 46.6 million iPhones. Comparing that to last year’s performance, Apple sold 45.5 million iPhones. This doesn’t seem to be a big increase, only a 2% year-over-year, but Apple’s other product offerings seemed to have picked up the slack that iPhone has failed in.
Speaking in terms of production for the iPhone X, Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said in an interview that production is “going well, we’re doing more each week and I’m pleased with how things are going.” Furthermore, adding that “The initial demand for iPhone X has been very, very strong.”
“Apple’s year-over-year revenue growth rate accelerated for the fourth consecutive quarter and drove EPS growth of 24 percent in the September quarter,” Apple’s CFO Luca Maestri added. “We also generated strong operating cash flow of $15.7 billion and returned $11 billion to investors through our capital return program.”
Apple now holds in total $268.9 billion cash that’s ready to spend at any given time. Shares of Apple went up more than 3% in after-hours trading.
