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Apple Inc. failed to set a new sales record in the last three months of founder and CEO Steve Jobs' life. Its financial results came in below expectations on Tuesday — a rare miss for the company.
After several record quarters, the July-to-September period saw Apple biding its time, with no new iPhone or iPad releases.
Net income in the fiscal fourth quarter was $6.62 billion, or $7.05 per share. That was up 54 percent from $4.31 billion, or $4.64 per share, a year ago.
Analysts polled by FactSet were expecting earnings of $7.28 per share.
Revenue was $28.3 billion, up 39 percent. Analysts were expecting $29.4 billion.
Apple sold 17.1 million iPhones in the quarter, which ended Sept. 24. That was well below analyst expectations and the 20.3 million sold in the third quarter.
IPhone buyers had been holding off and waiting for the new model that was launched last week, after the end of the quarter. Still, analysts expected the older models to keep much of their appeal.
Apple's forecast for the current quarter was more pleasing to investors. It said it expects earnings of $9.30 per share and revenue of $37 billion. Apple usually low-balls its forecasts, and analyst figures are usually higher. But in this case, analysts have had lower figures, expecting earnings of $9 per share and revenue of $36.7 billion.
Jobs relinquished his position as CEO in August, after going on medical leave in January. He died Oct. 5 after years of battling pancreatic cancer.
Apple's stock was down $24.33, or 5.8 percent, at $397.91 in afterhours trading, losing one week of gains.
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In a regular miss MSNBC write a story that nobody gives a crap about.
Apple stock dropped almost 6% because they earned ONLY $6.62 BILLION! last quarter and up ONLY 54% from last year?!?!?!?!. The stock market is one f**ked up place.
"The stock market is one f**ked up place"
And that is why many people have decided NOT to invest in this Market. Small investor has very little chance.
@tontosh, I would say that smaller investors have a better chance in the market if they use a little bit of common sense. Larger investors depend on analysts who seem rather detached from the real world. For example, common sense would have predicted this "miss" in earnings because many consumers aren't going to buy a new iPhone when reputable sources are reporting a newer one will become available in a month or two.
Funny world we live in when $28.3 billion in revenue and $6.62 billion in profit is disappointing.
There is something called "return on investment" first you need to study that then you will understand why 6.2billion in profit is a disappointment.
People who do not understand simple business economics please stop commenting on the revenue and profits.
I hate to tell you this, Mr. Boyce, but there are some of us who do understand business economics and still think many of the analysts are overrated and ovepaid.
25% net return looks fairly good to me, especially when we're talking billions of dollars.
It shouldn't take an analyst to figure that out. Most would take that kind of return w/o question.
Cat
Nobody here sounds like they are lacking understanding of ROI, but the fact is Apple 4Q is up over 50% from the previous years 4Q and people knew a new product was coming out after the quarter was over. The analysts are complaining for no reason. It's still a phenomenally good quarter considering no new products were released.
I have been most pleased with PCs. They are very easy to use and have so many attachments. The architecture is such that so many accessories can be added to the system. For example, monitors. There are so many choices for the PC. And the laptop or tablet are not well suited to power users who need convenient access to many terabytes of data. The PC desktop is still the king of computing for those who know computing.
How true ED.
"The PC desktop is still the king of computing for those who know computing."
And for those who just want to use the thing, there's mac.
To be completely technically speaking, a Mac is a PC. Apart from some superficial hardware differences, the operating system, and the Mac being significantly better constructed, they're the same thing.
Better constructed? I'd like to put my 5.1 GHz liquid cooled PC up against anything Mac can throw at it any day. Macs have their place where you have a person who requires simplicity over options. People who demand a far more sophisticated machine to handle more complex operations (in my case an insane amount of resume data mining and manipulation with CareerBuilder and Monster), a Mac will not be able to even do the job, not even do it poorly. Apple's draconian style of product development where they tell the customer what they need, not the other way around, works for sheep who enjoy flinging birds, cutting rope, and slicing fruit. Even graphic design companies have, for years, been using both PC and Mac in their applications as opposed to just Mac. Mac fanbois have just been brainwashed into the cult and can't see beyond it.
Listen, a dump truck has a much larger engine than my economy car does... but it's hauling a lot of garbage, so it needs that big engine. Yet ultimately, the performance isn't anything to celebrate.
While my economy car has nothing compared to the engine in a dump truck, I zip right past them on the highway though because it doesn't have to haul nearly as much mass.
You see Windows is a dump truck. Hauling a ton of information and is a large tax on your OS and RAM. So, PCs NEED to be pumped up with powerful processors and a ton of RAM. On the other hand, the Mac OS is much more streamlined and smooth and can get just as much, if not more done, with less because it's not hauling a bunch of garbage along with it. having said that, Apple puts plenty of RAM and processing power into their computers... so, they kind of dominate...
Having said all of that, if you're a PC gamer, a windows machine is still the way to go.
" 5.1 GHz liquid cooled PC"
My, thats a big hard drive you have.
Ha!
Maybe the 99%'ers should be protesting in front of Apple ... Mac's should be FREE for students !!! (yeah, right)
APPLE IS DONE!!!!!! SAY good buy!!!!
I thought July to September constituted Q3? Am I mistaken or did the rules change?
Many corporations run on a fiscal year. Fiscal Q4 is July-Sept. Fiscal Q1 is Oct thru Dec.
The best product Apple ever made was the Apple IIe. It's all downhill from there.
I don't think mb101 was really meaning to be technical. I interpreted that comment as purely a reflection on the signs of our time. And to your point about ROI, Apple only forecasted $25B and the analysts pushed that number higher in their expectation. It's eerily similar to the mass speculation about iPhone 5 and the disappointment over only getting an incremental upgrade. It seems that analysts are also not immune from acting on rumor. I don't think ROI has anythign to do with it whey they are already admitting that their profit margin is well above 30%.
Drop one one the ground,, it breaks.
I like my Galaxy S (and my Otter Box)
My sister has a Mac and is always asking me to "fix" it.
I love my PC, I can work on it and keep it running just fine.
Without Steve Jobs I don't see Apple doing much of anything anymore. The I-Phone is the best gadget they have but other than that everything else is completely unnecessary to everyday life let alone it's a pretty penny. I am switching back to Microsoft ASAP!!!
lmao "Apple Earnings Disappoint" this is the first time in what, 15 years? Wow they were only up 50% from a year ago HOW DISAPPOINTING
Less than expected earnings after msnbc's previous article on how Blackberry users will be flocking to other devices because of a day outage? LOOOL. STFU already.
Read the history of Apple "1985 Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple, in 1998 company was almost bankrupt and with help of 135Million from Bill Gates with condition to re-hire Steve brought back the company in to Black"
Now that Steve is Gone and the much awaited apple 5 is not here, this company has no vision left... really SAD.
I never owned Apple Products and never will, but I always admired the best "Showman" in the Computer Industry.
I'm with you on that, Steve is one of the best (if not the #1) "Showman" or "Marketer" of the century. It takes one helluva man to convince people they need a product that they haven't even laid their hands on.
I mean, we test drive a car before purchasing, don't we? Steve had a following, those who would camp out in the cold & rain all night long, just to get their hands on the latest product he released.
What really tickled me though, was the release of the 1st iPhone. Within hours, many AT&T cell lines were down. Fortunately, I had just switched from Cingular (AT&T) to Verizon. Seems to me, being the powerhouse that Jobs was, he should have been able to slap the heads of AT&T around a bit, and get things in order within a week.
Apple customers (in the US) never got the full potential out of their phones with AT&T. They couldn't even (legally) tether their phones to their computers. That was one time that Steve got outwitted, was his deal with AT&T. Had he chose Alltel or Verizon, sales of the iPhone probably would have been double what they are today.
For that very reason, there were many (including myself) who wouldn't buy an iPhone.
Still, there'll never be another Steve Jobs.
Cat
Apple must now rely on the Ghost in the machine.
Haven't owned anything Apple since 1982.
You know you are dealing with a whole new species of greed when a company posts 30 billion dollars worth of revenue in a single quarter and that's somehow disappointing news. Where the F#*k did these people come from?
There is something called "return on investment" first you need to study that then you will understand why 6.2billion in profit is a disappointment.
People who do not understand simple business economics please stop commenting on the revenue and profits.
If I can get Apple stock for $385 I will buy more. Good quarter with next quarter probably a blow away.
This story's been pretty much debunked as overly optimistic stock analytics.
The numbers from Apple's overall business overall was very good.
iPhone 4 sales fell leading into the release of 4S... duh...
iPhone 4S is already selling record units.
Mac sales way up from last year. In a tough economy. With iPad supposedly cutting into desktop sales.
It's unbridled greed like the comments made by these butthole analysts that make me want to puke
Hate to bust anyone's bubble, if you hold Apple stock, sell it while you can. There will never be a another Steve Jobs to keep Apple afloat. Once the product line in place (that was approved by Jobs) is gone, then what? And that #1 position that Apple had for a short time, was nothing but a tribute to Steve. All of this recent flurry of activity, is all for the name of Steve. It won't last.
Who is going to be the next one who will have the guts to cannibalize Apple (as Jobs did) to move forward? Tim Cook doesn't have the guts to, he could barely finish his first demo. The one thing that Cook done (once again, with Jobs approval), was to spit in the majority of Apple's employee's faces (he did learn something from Jobs), and moved the manufacturing operation to China. Yet the majority of Apple's customers are in the US.
My point is, yes others have made decisions, but not without Jobs stamp of approval. These employees no longer have a leader.
Yes, Apple has a couple of big hits left, but what after that? Apple will not maintain this kind of lead long term w/o Jobs. He was the heart & soul of Apple, and just like any other organization, team, whatever, once the heart & soul is gone, the ship sinks.
Apple stockholders, take your money & run. While you still can. And if you choose otherwise, don't cry about the consequences.
Cat
17 million iPHONES all made in China. Just imagine what it would be like to manufacturing them in the US that could employ hundreds or thousands in the USA. But then, Apple would probably lose money on the $499 price tag.
And that was one of my points. Steve Jobs, the All-American icon, sold out his very own US employees in the name of profit. Why, I don't know, as he certainly didn't need (nor was going to live to see) the extra margin.
Except on his deathbed, when Apple rallied to briefly capture the #1 position that Exxon held for many, many years. And we really don't know if Steve was even aware of it, as secretive as he was.
Steve probably couldn't even hold up the bottle of champagne to celebrate it, even had he wanted to.
A true American icon (or hero) doesn't sell out his own country out so cheaply. Not under any circumstances. Trading skilled labor for slave labor? Steve made many great decisions, but that wasn't one of them.
Cat
Cat,
All American brands, whether HP or Dell or Texas Instruments or Apple, have Chinese firms manufacture their products. Apple wasn't particularly deviating from the norm when it decided to have Chinese people manufacture their products. If you think your HP or Dell computer was manufactured by an American worker, I'm afraid I've got some bad news for you.
Plus, you can't say that Apple hasn't brought affluence to Americans. It has. It's just potentially—at least according to your argument—not as much as it would have been, if Apple products were manufactured here in America.
And bear in mind, Apple stuff is manufactured in Taiwan, not communist China.
@Thomas
I understand return on investment perfectly. But if you don't think earning 25% in a business where most companies are playing with razor thin margins, then your perception of reality is out of whack. It's hardly disappointing when you've made an increase of 54% net income from a year ago. Most CEO's would probably sell their children and their mothers for that. Apple is sitting on nearly $80 billion in cash. What should be disappointing is that they haven't given a dividend on that cash and rewarded their investors.
Apple drops 7% and now is playing the blame game. Apple needs to look in the mirror.
And that very day Google shows off a fantastic new OS and Moto shows off a fantastic new Android phone...hmmm...