Back in the day, Apple would report poor earnings on a Friday after the market closed (so people might forget about it over the weekend) and good earnings on a Thursday. And when they announced today, a Monday, people expected big news. But not this big!
Apple generated $24 Billion dollars in revenue in FY07 (their first fiscal qtr is the holiday qtr) and shipped more than 2 million Macs, 10 million iPods, and 1 million iPhones. Analysts expected profit of around $0.67 per diluted share: Apple reported more than $1 per share – above even the highest expectations. Apple’s after hours stock price hit another all-time high of over $184 per share.
This performance, coming off a great Back To School season, and reports of huge market share gains may be just the beginning. Now that the holiday season is here, can we expect even bigger things from Steve and Co?
I wonder how many quarters in a row Apple has blown away Street expectations? It has to be at least 4, maybe 6. They continue to surprise everyone. Howeverm what goes up must come down and it mght be smart for them to start reeling in these huge surprises. Apple typically gives low guidance which either makes them the worst predictors of their own success or……………could be this be Steve working the reality distrortion field to perfection??
With $15B in the bank, certaily Apple could do some home maintenance too. How about making .Mac a real contender. It still takes forever to upload/download to an iDisk (at least for those of us without T-1s in our homes). A little tidying up where needed would still leave at least 10+Billion in the bank. C’mon Steve, you can’t take it with you, let’s see Apple make some aquisitions or something!!
While I agree with Barry on the .Mac thing, can I please have that replacement for the 12in Powerbook that went AWOL so long ago? I sold mine and bought a 15in to replace it and have pined for the smaller form factor ever since.
And while it is super easy to spend someone else’s money (Do I say that as a tiny shareholder?), $15 billion does a lot of product development. Perhaps a real tablet computer replacement for the Newton could be in the near future as well. It would be so nice to be able to travel, give talks with Keynote and more using an Apple ultra-portable tablet that functions like a tablet should.
All I can say is: BOW DOWN TO THE KING 😉
Steve Jobs OWNS the tech world and is the absolute best thing to happen to it!