Apple Stuns Wall Street with a Blowout Quarter

Yesterday, the maker of iPhone, Apple (AAPL: Nasdaq), announced its quarterly earnings. The numbers reported blew away, not only the company’s guidance, but analyst expectations.

Apple sold nearly 9 million more iPhones than expected. Its cash pile expanded and is now at a point they can by almost all of the S&P 500 companies in all cash deals. They also announced that they were going to ship its new Apple Watch in April.

After the earnings announcement shares of Apple soared five percent in after-hours market trading. iPhone 6 was a runaway success which helped to boost revenue and earnings. There is a lot of demand for iPhones in Asia, who need a larger screen, and this boosted numbers. In an interview with Reuters, Apples CFO, Luca Maestri said that revenue in China increased by 70 percent and that the company was not concerned with any form of economic slowdown eating into Apple’s profits.

Here come the Numbers

What were these numbers? Here we go. Apple reported earnings at $3.06 per share. Revenue came in at $76.4 billion. Not one, but both of these numbers are records. The Street expected $2.06 per share and revenue at $74.25 billion. Apple sold 74.5 million iPhones versus the estimate of 65.7 million. Sales of its iPad came in at 21.4 million. Estimates were for 22.2 million units sold. Thanks to these numbers, Apples cash pile swelled 15 percent to $178 billion. These numbers blew past Apple’s own guidance.

Analysts were expecting strong numbers, thanks to China’s sales, but these numbers were even better. Couple that with the new product releases, like the smart watch, we are expecting the company to improve on these numbers. Which means even more gains for the underlying stock. Next up, investors will wait to see if Apple will increase its capital return program. This will be announced in April.