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Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results
- chollida1 9y agoMaking my running notes again from the earnings report and call..... Numbers: - $52.6 billion in revenue, up 12% YOY - 46.7 million iPhones sold, up 2% YOY for revenue - 10.3 million iPads sold, up 14% YOY for revenue - 5.4 million Macs sold, up 25% YOY for revenue - $8.5 billion services revenue, up 34% YOY - $3.2 billion other products revenue, up 36% YOY - Q1 guidance: $84 to $87 billion, a record high. - 4Q EPS $2.07, Est. $1.87 - 4Q Rev. $52.6B, Est. $50.7B Where it came from: - China is back to growth with 22% quarter over quarter and 12% year over year revenue growth. Europe saw the strongest year over year revenue growth, up 20%. The U.S revenues increased year over year by 14%, while the rest of the Asia Pacific increased by 5% year over year. - Apple announces it sold 46.7 million iPhones in Q417, compared to 45.5 million units in the year-ago quarter. This is in line with expectations. This represents a year-over-year 3% unit growth and 2% revenue growth, suggesting slightly more people are buying higher priced iPhones like the 7 Plus and 8 Plus. - Apple sold 10.3 million iPads in Q417, compared to 9.3 million units in the year-ago quarter - for the Apple Watch, Apple Pay and Apple TV products... The 36% year-over-year growth for this category, meaning Apple Watch and AirPods sales have been strong. - Apple announces it generated $8.5 billion in revenues on services, which includes the App Store and Apple Music, in Q417. This is 34% growth from $6.3 billion in the year-ago quarter and 17% quarter over quarter growth. - Apple sold 5.4 million Macs in Q417, representing 10% unit growth year over year. Mac revenues are up 25% year over year
- wnevets 9y ago>- 5.4 million Macs sold Do you have the units sold YOY?
- runesoerensen 9y agohttps://twitter.com/BenedictEvans/status/926189172066418688 https://twitter.com/BenedictEvans/status/926189172066418688
- wil421 9y agoIt looks in line with what I would expect. I’d bet it’s younger folks. The interesting part is the fluctuations in the past years. Looks like people are buying when new hardware is released.
- fancyfacebook 9y ago25% increase in macs sold is huge, not sure if this was just a weird spike or not but that really stands out
- djrogers 9y ago10% increase in macs sold - 25% increase in revenue from those mac sales.
- mtgx 9y agoIs the reverse true for iPhones? Like even with the (granted not that many) $1,000+ iPhone X's, there was only a 2% increase in revenue, so I wonder if Apple is starting to sell more lower-end iPhones as a percentage of its total iPhone sales.
- jrs95 9y agoConsidering that preorders just started last week and it goes on sale tomorrow, I doubt it had much of an impact. More will probably show up next quarter. I'd guess that less 8 and 8 Plus were sold due to people waiting on X. That's what I'm doing, anyways
- ghaff 9y agoPresumably the revenue wouldn't be recognized until the phone was shipped so the direct impact of the iPhone X would be zilch. As you say, to the degree it has an impact at all, it's probably negative as, in the short term, there would be more 8/8+ sales if there weren't an X coming in the relatively near term. [ADDED: And as others have noted, no iPhone X sales happened anyway before the end of the quarter being reported and only about a week of iPhone 8 sales.]
- toasterlovin 9y agoQuarter ended before they sold any iPhone Xs.
- djrogers 9y ago
- bgarbiak 9y ago"This represents a year-over-year 3% unit growth and 2% revenue growth, suggesting slightly more people are buying higher priced iPhones like the 7 Plus and 8 Plus." Isn't that the other way around? More units were sold, but at slightly cheaper price. If they were more expensive the revenue growth rate would be greater than 3%.
- austenallred 9y agoThe scale of this is baffling. They earned the entire value of Tesla or Ford in profit in the past quarter. Apple's market cap has increased almost $400b in the past 18 months. Holy shit.
- agumonkey 9y agoI was part of the group that thought it would be impossible to go above flat or even decrease a bit. I don't dream at Apple, but it's still impressive.
- vizzah 9y agoSee the bigger picture by comparing Q4 2017 to Q4 2015 - that was a blow-out quarter. Sales and EPS have since declined, especially considering the vast buyback amount.
- austenallred 9y agoiPhone release vs without. See what Q1 is like.
- forbes 9y agoProfit was 8.7B. Ford has a market cap of 49B.
- austenallred 9y agoI actually meant last year, not quarter. Shoot.
- eternalban 9y agoQatar earned less revenue in an entire year (2016). Apple should start buying S400s to defend its offshore accounts. :)
- kpwagner 9y agoThe iPad is dead... lol. Only 10.3 millions units sold last quarter.
- hamstercat 9y agoMost people I know have one, and are not looking at updating ever until it breaks. For browsing/email/facebook, you don't need the latest one. Even the iPad 2 is enough to do those tasks. I feel there's much less urgency to update than on the iPhones and the Mac.
- dpkonofa 9y agoI would've agreed with this except that my parents, who only do exactly that, decided to buy a new one because they said the old one was starting to feel slow. It's exactly as fast as it is the day I gave it to them for that kind of stuff but they went to the Apple Store to get my dad's phone serviced and they played around with one of the demo units. My dad commented on how much faster it felt and BAM, they walked away with a new iPad and a replacement iPhone (out of warranty but cheaper than a new one).
- nimrody 9y agoMy ipad 2 is certainly much slower tan it used to be. I believe the reason is the new iOS versions. Even switching between apps feels annoying.
- mcphage 9y agoApps are also written / optimized for much newer hardware.
- nikbackm 9y agoYep, should never have updated it past iOS 6.
- icantdrive55 9y ago"A problem occurred with this webpage so it was reloaded, fix--blah--blah--I refuse to buy a new Apple Product until I'm better off financially--which is looking bad."
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- alwillis 9y agoHere's what's nuts: Apple’s market cap is just under $900 billion dollars[1]; as crazy as it sounds, unless something totally unforeseen happens, they could be at a $1 trillion market cap a little over a year from now, after 2018's holiday quarter with a full year of iPhone 8/8+/X sales, the successor of the iPhone X, plus sales of the iMac Pro starting at $4999 each and the Mac Pro and all of the rest of lineup. [1]: https://ycharts.com/companies/AAPL/market_cap#recessions=false&series=calc:market_cap,type:company,id:AAPL,,calc:market_cap,type:company,id:XOM&maxPoints=550&zoom=5&format=real https://ycharts.com/companies/AAPL/market_cap#recessions=fal...
- pdog 9y agoWhether they're a $1T company in that timeframe (one year) mostly depends on the strength of the U.S. dollar, given that the majority of their revenue comes from overseas.
- alwillis 9y agoProbably not. Apple routinely adjusts their pricing based on the strength or weakness of the dollar. On the quarterly conference call with analysts, Apple talks about their hedging programs against exchange rate fluctuations.
- brlewis 9y agofor the Apple Watch, Apple Pay and Apple TV products... The 36% year-over-year growth for this category, meaning Apple Watch and AirPods sales have been strong. How do you come to that conclusion? Couldn't it simply be that one of those products is selling better than a year ago?
- IBM 9y agoNarrative killer: Mac unit sales up 10% YoY, revenue up 25% YoY
- not_that_noob 9y agoAnd iPhone X (exxx not ten) will blow it out of the park. Cook's da man.
- not_that_noob 9y agoGot a lot of Apple haters - I wasn't ripping on Android. Just pointing out the obvious. Why the down vote?
- salmon30salmon 9y agoI assume you were downvoted because the comment is not really in line with what is expected on HN. It only tangentially relates to the parent, and does not add anything substantive to the conversation.
- djrogers 9y agoWhat narrative would that kill?
- IBM 9y agoAll these takes https://mjtsai.com/blog/2016/10/27/new-macbook-pros-and-the-state-of-the-mac/ https://mjtsai.com/blog/2016/10/27/new-macbook-pros-and-the-...
- simonh 9y agoThere’s been constant whining that Apple doesn’t care about the Mac and has abandoned the platform, the line is stagnating and they don’t sell any models anybody wants to buy because they’re all terrible and everybody will buy big ass Windows laptops with proper keyboards, 32GB RAM and an escape key for EMACS. Except for actual customers that are buying Macs by the truckload, that is.
- ihuman 9y agoMacStories has some nice visualizations of the new quarterly results compared to previous quarters. https://www.macstories.net/news/apple-q4-2017-results-52-6-billion-revenue-46-7-million-iphones-10-3-million-ipads-sold/ https://www.macstories.net/news/apple-q4-2017-results-52-6-b...
- fragsworth 9y agoI have a question. What are the "Services" they refer to in the article? Are these B2B and/or government contracts, the kind which Oracle/IBM are well-known for?
- _s 9y agoiCloud, iTunes, storage etc I think.
- gxs 9y agoIt's been mentioned that what Google pays apple to keep Google as the default search in Safari is included in this figure. Not sure what percentage that is, but I've seen it mentioned several times. Not sure about what else is included.
- nerfhammer 9y agoSeems like support contracts would also count
- r00fus 9y agoApple doesn't really do B2B in any major fashion that doesn't involve their core product lines. So answer to your question is no.
- Godel_unicode 9y agoGoogle pays Apple for being the default search engine.
- jsjohnst 9y agoThe last time I heard that number leak (admittedly been a while), that was "only" in the single digit billions per year. The services category did $8.5B in the past quarter.
- threeseed 9y agoActually Apple does via the IBM partnership. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Mobile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Mobile
- sssilver 9y agoOfftopic -- what's up with the digit 1 in paxton1@apple.com, hoover1@apple.com?
- diminish 9y agoyear-over-year 3% unit growth for iPhone units. So generally are we at the end of mobile absorption by humanity and mobile growth? From now on instead of market growth shall we see market share competition? Apple is lucky to sell more expensive iPhones and better margins with better ASP. Carriers are still the big driver by bundled tariffs and that helps high end smartphone sales.
- camillomiller 9y agoEnd of growth is not end of absorption. Still 40 to 50 M phones sold every quarter... I think seeing everything through the financial growth lens really keeps us from grasping how steadily a stagnating Apple would still be physically growing.
- speeq 9y agoDoesn't include iPhone X sales, next quarter results will be interesting.
- elefanten 9y agoWe are not at the end because there are still lots of people in less developed areas to reach.
- pjmlp 9y agoThose countries don't have the budget for getting iPhones beyond the lucky ones on the higher society layers.
- pwtweet 9y agoWalt Mossberg @waltmossberg Perspective: Mac revenues alone in Apple’s qtr just released were $7+ billion. At an annual rate, that would put the Mac in the Fortune 100. Is Walt correct on this?
- bradfa 9y agoIf they do a quarter like this past one for macs for the upcoming three quarters then Mac sales would be on the cusp of being in the Fortune 100, not just in the 500! http://fortune.com/fortune500/list/ http://fortune.com/fortune500/list/
- vermontdevil 9y ago$269 billion in cash. Insane to think about that.
- danjoc 9y ago$269 billion in tax avoidance.
- toasterlovin 9y agoThis is the tiredest trope that ever traipsed. The company's management has an obligation to the company's owners to pursue all legal means to reduce their tax obligation. You better believe the IRS would have come knocking already if they were doing anything illegal by keeping that $269B outside of the U.S.
- danjoc 9y ago>if they were doing anything illegal by keeping that $269B outside of the U.S. You've reversed cause and effect. They keep the money outside the U.S. to legally avoid the taxes. They can't bring it back. They'd rather horde the cash than contribute Apple's fair share to the country that made Apple's success possible. Deplorable.
- macintux 9y agoI’m sure you would find Apple pays plenty in American taxes. 35% is a huge haircut to take on money earned outside the United States. The shareholders would correctly be out for blood.
- danjoc 9y ago>I’m sure you would find Apple pays plenty in American taxes. I found Apple incorrectly reports to investors taxes paid. "For example, in fiscal year 2011, on its 10-K reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Apple said it paid $6.9 billion in taxes to the U.S. government, but on its tax return filed with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, it reported taxes due of $2.5 billion, the report said." https://www.infoworld.com/article/2614464/techology-business/senate-report--apple-claims-subsidiaries-to-avoid-paying-billions-in-taxes-each-y.html https://www.infoworld.com/article/2614464/techology-business... So yeah, I'm sure you think they pay a lot of money. >35% is a huge haircut to take on money earned outside the United States. 30% is a huge haircut to take on money earned outside the app store, but Apple still demands that too. Suddenly Apple's in favor of taxes. Developer taxes.
- djrogers 9y agoInteresting to hear the execs talk about iPhone sales in a manner that explicitly refutes the rumors of iPhone 7 outselling 8: “They instantly became our two most popular iPhone models and have been every week since then.”
- Aron 9y agoCome on Apple. Buy Tesla. Let's go. OBVIOUS.
- Aron 9y agoThis site is pretty good at sniping comments that would pass a 'is this reddit quality?' discriminator on generic NLP but I think the underlying idea is interesting under the context of 'what now brown cow?' Elon Musk has done his job getting EVs kickstarted. I suspect he's happy to move along and work on tunnels and rockets. Tesla principally needs some capital security, some quality tech managers and bench, and some just plain maturity in investor relations. The two would do pretty well in brand alignment in general. Apple needs, on a shareholder concern basis, to find markets of large enough size to matter, and Tesla has its toes in some extremely large markets. Anyway that's the hypothesis for those that want to ponder 'how does Apple do something other than make iPhones'. Thanks for the downvotes anyway, bots.
- dmode 9y ago$87 billion projected for Q4. What an empire they have built. Amazingly impressive. And all I heard over the last 4-5 years was how Apple was doomed
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- shmerl 9y agoIt's not necessarily a good thing. Apple are quite nasty. And the bigger they are, the more damage they can cause.
- sbuk 9y agoExtrapolate.
- hashmal 9y ago> all I heard over the last 4-5 years was how Apple was doomed Shows how the press is extremely focused on buzz. Doom predictions sell.
- MarkMc 9y agoIncome before tax: $13.9 billion Income tax: $3.2 billion So Apple's effective tax rate is 23%. Honestly that's better than I expected, but still less than it should be. Federal corporate income tax is 35% and California adds 8.84%. So there are other California companies which pay almost twice as much tax as Apple. (Keep in mind that almost all of the value created by Apple is created in California. If Apple were to outsource all their sales and be a purely Californian company then it would make almost the same amount of pre-tax profit)
- adventured 9y ago> So Apple's effective tax rate is 23%. ... Honestly that's better than I expected, but still less than it should be. ... Federal corporate income tax is 35% That's misleading. You're comparing their global effective tax rate versus the US Federal rate. The question is how much did Apple pay in taxes in the US, on US-based profits. 23% isn't less than it should be, it's extremely reasonable compared to rates around the world. The OECD average statutory corporate income tax rate is around 24% (the effective rate is even lower). The average effective corporate income tax rates for 2012: UK, 10%; Germany, 14%; Canada, 16%; Australia, 17%; China, 19%; France, 20%; South Korea, 20%. Even Scandinavian nations like Finland (20%) or Sweden (22%) have lower statutory rates (to say nothing of the effective). Denmark has a reputation for having a government spending rate that is among the highest on earth among developed nations as a share of its economy, and its statutory rate is merely 24.5%.
- MarkMc 9y agoMy point is that almost all of Apple's profit is in reality generated in California, even if its sales and accounting profits are booked overseas. So I'm comparing US-based profit with the US Federal tax rate. Let's say an iPhone is sold in the UK, generating a $200 profit. How much of that profit was really generated in the UK and how much in the US? The answer is to consider what would happen if Apple's US and UK operations were two distinct, independent companies: Apple in California would determine almost everything about the way iPhones are sold in the UK - where the Apple stores are located, what the stores look like, what their TV and billboard advertising should look like, what happens when a customer returns a product, etc. Apple US would then take this list of requirements and negotiate with a UK business partner. In that negotiation the UK partner has very little leverage - if the UK partner doesn't like terms Apple US is offering, Apple US can just find another partner. The UK partner then sells phones according to Apple's specification. The result is that the UK partner will have thin margins and almost all profit will flow back to the US. Unfortunately, tax law allows Apple to move its intellectual property to an Irish subsidiary company. The profit on UK sales is then booked in Ireland and Apple pays the low Irish tax rate even though the real profit has been generated in the US. I accept your point that 23% may be a good corporate tax rate - but in that case it should be 23% for all Californian companies, not just the ones which are able to transfer their IP offshore.
- submeta 9y agoSomehow happy and delighted to see this