Apple shares are bouncing back in after hours trading today, after taking a hefty beating on shaky news related to CEO Steve Jobs’ health. News delivered from Apple in the Q1 2009 Financial Earnings Call has revealed another record breaking quarter for the company.
As the specific numbers state, Apple’s iPod has become an incredibly well received product, most notably the iPod touch. While it may have cannibalized some iPhone market share, the sales are enough to boost earnings, which as it currently stands is reflecting positively on Wall Street.
After serious shareholder and investor concern grew louder and louder over Steve Jobs’ health, beating Apple’s stock price down in the process, a positive quarter was not expected by many analysts. Consequently, Apple shares hit a deep low dipping back into the high-seventies, a scary 52 week drop.
For the fiscal quarter, which ended December 27, 2008, Apple specifically posted record breaking numbers making it the most successful quarter in the company’s history, in terms of revenue. They posted a record $10.17 billion revenue and record net quarterly profit of $1.61 billion (or $1.78 per diluted share). The quarter directly one year ago contained numbers of $9.6 billion in revenue, and a net quarterly profit of $.158 billion (or $1.76 per diluted share).
This record breaking first quarter boasted sales of 2,524,000 Mac computers, showing nine percent growth over the previous quarter. The company had also seen record breaking iPod sales with a whopping 22,727,000 units sold, representing 3 percent growth. Additionally, 4,363,000 iPhones had been sold this quarter displaying an exemplary 88 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter.
On the news that Apple delivered today, shares are confidently strong in after hours trading. Hopefully the confidence felt throughout Wall Street will be enough to hold Apple shares after rather disappointing iPhone sales have been shared.
It’s evident that Apple’s business models are doing great, even in times of economic uncertainty. What happens moving forward with the iPhone family product lineup should be of major importance to Apple. Diversifying the iPhone lineup and aggressively increasing market share, while broadening global positioning should be at the forefront in 2009.
