And even though iPhone sales slowed down as expected, Apple continued to rewrite record books by reporting the largest ever profit achieved by a publicly listed company in history, beating its own previously set record.
And while the world reports slowness in iPhone sales — the figures which largely determine most of Apple’s profits, the number wasn’t really that low. While analysts had predicted sales ranged between 75.4 million and 77 million iPhones, the Cupertino giant managed to sell 74.8 Million of them, thus falling just a few hundreds short of its expected targets.
The Company posted record quarterly revenue of $75.9 billion and record quarterly net income of $18.4 billion, or $3.28 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $74.6 billion and net income of $18 billion, or $3.06 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 40.1 percent compared to 39.9 percent in the year-ago quarter.
Another interesting fact coming out the earnings report, is the fact that international sales accounted for 66 percent of the quarter’s revenue — perhaps the most any company sees, globally.
Talking about Apple’s $200 billion capital return program, CFO Luca Maestri says, that the company has already completed $153 Billion of that program. Apple generated operating cash flow of $27.5 billion during the quarter, and returned over $9 billion to investors through share repurchases and dividends.
Apple’s board of directors has declared a cash dividend of $.52 per share of the Company’s common stock. The dividend is payable on February 11, 2016, to shareholders of record as of the close of business on February 8, 2016.
Apple is providing the following guidance for its fiscal 2016 second quarter:
- revenue between $50 billion and $53 billion
- gross margin between 39 percent and 39.5 percent
- operating expenses between $6 billion and $6.1 billion
- other income/(expense) of $325 million
- tax rate of 25.5 percent
