No. of Recommendations: 10
John Ternus sounded like Tim Cook's twin in his few remarks on the 2Q call ;-)
Despite supply constraints, Apple reported record fiscal second quarter results with revenues climbing 17% to $111.2 billion, net income rising 19% to $29.6 billion and EPS up 22% to $2.01.
This was Apple’s best March quarter ever with the company generating double-digit growth across every geographic segment, led by 28% growth in Greater China. iPhone’s revenues jumped 22% to a record $57 billion, fueled by “extraordinary demand” for the iPhone 17 lineup. During the quarter, Services revenues increased 16% to a record $31 billion with broad-based growth across the company’s record 2.5 billion active devices. Apple’s retail stores generated record results with heavy global traffic in the stores as the company celebrated its 50th anniversary.
The company ended the quarter with a strong balance sheet with $147 billion in cash and investments, $70 billion in long-term debt and $106.5 billion in shareholders’ equity. During the first half of the year, Apple’s free cash flow jumped 64% to $78.2 billion, and the company paid $8 billion in dividends and repurchased $37 billion of its common stock. Apple announced a 4% increase in its quarterly dividend to $.27 per share and an additional share repurchase program of $100 billion.
As previously announced, Tim Cook will be transitioning to Executive Chairman of Apple on Sept. 1 and remains “extremely optimistic” about Apple’s future over the next 50 years and beyond. Apple's new CEO is John Ternus, a 25-year veteran of the company and former Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering. John Ternus described Apple’s "incredible roadmap" for upcoming products and services, stating that the next few years will be the company's most exciting period in a quarter-century.
Apple's fiscal third quarter outlook is for revenues to increase 14%-17%, despite continued supply constraints, with gross margin in the 47.5% to 48.5% range and operating expenses in the range of $18.8 billion to $19.1 billion.
Apple remains committed to its disciplined capital allocation strategy, which is first to reinvest in the business and then return excess cash to shareholders. Apple has distributed over $1 trillion to shareholders through $850 billion in share repurchases and $150 billion in dividends. (Berkshire has a little catching up to do on the buyback front ;-)
