The Apple share price hit its highest levels since August earlier this week and looks set to open higher when US markets reopen later today, as it continues to set itself apart from the wider market turmoil being seen elsewhere.
It’s also notable that Apple has been one of the few tech companies that hasn’t announced widespread job cuts, and last night’s Q2 numbers once again pointed to another strong quarter, even though revenues still declined from the same period last year. This was the second quarter in succession Apple had been unable to grow its revenues, the first time this has happened since 2016, but the fall of 3% was below the 5% Apple predicted when they reported in Q1.
Last night’s Q2 numbers saw revenues and profits beat expectations, coming in at $94.84bn, down from last year's $97.3bn, while profits came in at $1.52c a share.
iPhone revenues led the way with $51.33bn, comfortably ahead of forecasts, and a record for Q2, while services revenue only saw a modest improvement to $20.9bn, also a record number, although it did come up short of consensus.
Wearables, which include the Watch, returned $8.75bn, also coming in above expectations, while Mac revenues saw a big drop from last year’s $10.4bn, and also fell 7.4% short of forecasts at $7.17bn.
iPad revenues were $6.67bn more or less in line with forecasts, with Apple announcing another $90bn of buybacks and increasing the dividend to $0.24c a share.
On a regional basis the Rest of Asia Pacific was a notable outperformer seeing revenues of $8.12bn, an 18.55% beat on forecasts, as well as a big jump from last year with India driving a lot of the gains. The Americas were the one area of disappointment with revenues of $37.78bn, a big drop from last year’s $40.89b, a more than 7% decline.
On a side note, Apple benefited from the recent banking turmoil after launched its new banking service and a new savings account with a 4.15% interest rate, seeing inflows of almost $1bn in the first days of launching with 240k accounts signing up to the service, although you need to have an Apple credit card to qualify.
