Apple’s report for its results for fiscal fourth quarter has been out on Thursday. Apple while beating the expected revenue generation of $61.4 billion achieved the figure of $62.9 billion in revenue for the quarter. Per share earnings of $ 2.91 also beat the expectation of $2.78. The year ago revenue was $52.58 billion with $2.07 earnings per share.
Besides this upward earning trend by the Apple, due to nature of its business, analysts also weigh its performance on the criterion of total sales, product wise sales, average selling price etc. Due to which its trend position swaps on some scales because of the mix-numbered results.
In reported quarter, Apple sold a total of 46.9 million of its iPhone, a little up from 46.8 million from same quarter a year ago, against expected handset sale of 48.4 million.
Also from the sale of about 9.7 million iPad in last quarter, Apple generated revenue of $4.09 billion but missed the sale expectation of 10.53 million units.
Mac with the sale of 5.3 million units generated revenue of $7.41 billion for the Apple.
Though number of cell phones sold by the Apple in fourth quarter remained low from what was analysts expecting but, average selling price of $793 to expectation of $750.78, leveled the negative impact.
High average selling price in an important indicator of customer’s purchasing habit to a specific company or product demand. For Apple, not considering of this time’s even more expensive price range of the new series of iPhones launched a week before end of September quarter, customers picked more high cost product. Prices of Apple’s new iPhone XR starts from $749, for iPhone XS its $999 and that of iPhone XS Max starts at $1,099. Response to Apple’s new expensive series was higher than to its less expensive older models iPhone7 and iPhone8.
With the view point that, in quarterly report, factor of number of units sold does not represent company’s performance to investors, Apple’s management has decided some changes in this regard. They decided for report of revenue figures to be wrapped together for Apple’s three products i.e iPhone, iPad and Mac and also not disclose individual sales number for these products from next quarter.
Management also announced per share dividend of 73 cents to be paid on November 15 and also stated $89 billion to $93 billion, the revenue generation range for the first quarter next year, whereas analysts are expecting slight higher $93.02 billion figure.