Ali Hasan
Apple is definitely on a dream run as they have clocked more than $100 billion in revenues in its largest quarter earnings since they started their business operations. They are also the world’s largest company by market capitalization as of now having a market cap of $2.34 trillion at the time of writing this blog.
Apple delivered its largest quarter by revenue of all time on Wednesday at $111.4 billion in its first-quarter earnings report for fiscal 2021. It’s the first time Apple crossed the symbolic $100 billion mark in a single quarter, and sales were up 21% year over year. Sales for every product category rose by double-digit percentage points.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said the results could have been even better if not for the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns that forced Apple to temporarily shutter some Apple stores around the world. Cook said that Apple’s total install base for iPhones is over 1 billion, up from the previous data point of 900 million. The total active install base for all Apple products is 1.65 billion.
Apple did not provide official guidance for the upcoming quarter. It hasn’t offered investors forecasts since the beginning of the pandemic. But even the lack of guidance could not diminish what was a blowout quarter for the iPhone maker. Apple has benefited during the pandemic from increased PC and gadget sales as people who are working or going to school from home because of lockdowns look to upgrade the devices they use.
Apple’s other products category, which includes Apple Watch and headphones such as AirPods and Beats, was up 29% from last year to $12.97 billion, even as people are spending less time commuting and traveling. Apple released a high-end set of headphones, AirPods Pro Max, in December, with a steep $549 suggested price.
Macs and iPads, the Apple devices most likely to be used for remote work and school, were also up this quarter. Apple released new Mac computers powered by its own chips instead of Intel processors in December to positive reviews that said they were superior in terms of power and battery life to the old models.
Apple’s services business, which the company has highlighted as a growth engine, was up 24% year over year to $15.76 billion. That product category is a catch-all: It includes the money Apple makes from the App Store, subscriptions to digital content such as Apple Music or Apple TV+, licensing fees paid by Google to be the iPhone’s default search engine and AppleCare warranties.
Apple highlighted in its release that international sales accounted for 64% of the company’s sales, up from 61% in the same quarter last year. Apple also declared a cash dividend of $0.205 cents per share and said that it had spent over $30 billion on total shareholder return, which includes share buybacks, during the quarter. Apple’s first fiscal quarter is typically it’s largest of the year and includes critical holiday sales during December.
“Our December quarter business performance was fuelled by double-digit growth in each product category, which drove all-time revenue records in each of our geographic segments and an all-time high for our installed base of active devices,” Apple CFO, Luca Maestri said in a statement. “These results helped us generate record operating cash flow of $38.8 billion.
