Yesterday evening, after the US stock market closed, Apple published its books for the fourth quarter. The company gave concrete sales figures for the last time.
Apple generated 62.9 billion US dollars and posted a profit of 14.12 billion US dollars. The company exceeded expectations with a profit of 2.91 US dollars per share. Analysts on average had forecast 2.77 US dollars.
Sales figures will remain confidential
The iGroup announced that it would no longer provide specific sales figures for individual products. The change will come into effect in the Christmas quarter. This step is unlikely to please analysts and investors in particular. Many competitors, such as Samsung, have been taking this approach for some time. The iGroup justifies the measure by saying that specific sales figures are not a good indicator of the success of Apple's business.
sales forecast disappoints
After the market closed, the share price fell significantly at times due to Apple's forecast, despite expectations being exceeded. The iGroup forecast sales of around 89 - 93 billion US dollars for the Christmas season. Analysts expected revenues of around 100 billion US dollars. CFO Luca Maestri justified the disappointing sales forecast with the fact that many international currencies have lost value against the US dollar. This means that around 2 billion US dollars in sales will be lost. Delivery bottlenecks are also to be expected.
