Apple's Third Quarter Earnings Beat Analysts' Consensus by 19 Per Cent

Apple announced their Q3 financial results late yesterday, posting a net quarterly profit of $320 million, or $.37 per diluted share, and revenue of $3.52 billion. Analysts had projected earnings of 31 cents on revenue of $3.33 billion as we noted last Friday. Apple always, at least recently, beats the analysts' estimate. These results compare to a net profit of $61 million, or $.08 per diluted share, and revenue of $2.01 billion in the year-ago quarter, and represent revenue growth of 75 percent and net profit growth of 425 percent. Gross margin was 29.7 percent, up from 27.8 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 39 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

The really good news is that Apple's computer sales were up 35 per cent to 1.2 million. This is in addition to the growth in iPod sales of 425 per cent to 6.2 million.

Unfortunately, Apple no longer reports on sales by individual computer lines, only as desktops (Power Macs, iMacs, eMacs, Mac minis and Xserves) and portables (PowerBooks, iBooks). As a whole, desktop sales were up 13 per cent from last quarter and 65 per cent from last year to 687,000 units. Portable sales were up 7 per cent from last quarter and 8 per cent over last year to 495,000 units.

The only negatives are that sales continued to decline in the Japan region and the retail stores sales were flat with 3 per cent decline in revenue from the last quarter. Still, the retail stores did about 100 per cent better than last year in unit sales and revenue. [Bill Fox]