Apple Earnings Disappoint As AAPL Plunges After Hours

[Michael Essany]

Apple on Wednesday announced holiday quarter earnings that, despite passing Wall Street's estimates, fell short of revenue forecasts.

Plunging better than 5% in after hours trading, Apple revealed earnings came in at $13.1 billion on sales of 47.8 million iPhones, 22.9 million iPads and 4.1 million Macs.

Analysts had expected the company to report earnings excluding items of $13.47 a share on $54.73 billion in revenue, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters.

If you're keeping score at home, 47.8 million iPhones is a new quarterly record for Apple, which sold 37 million iPhones in the same quarter of 2011.

"We’re thrilled with record revenue of over $54 billion and sales of over 75 million iOS devices in a single quarter," said CEO Tim Cook. "We’re very confident in our product pipeline as we continue to focus on innovation and making the best products in the world."

Unfortunately for AAPL investors, however, it doesn't look like today's report will have the strength to give shares of Apple the long-awaited bounce that some were hoping for in response to today's quarterly earnings report - a report that didn't necessarily disappoint, but didn't wow Wall Street either.

"We’re pleased to have generated over $23 billion in cash flow from operations during the quarter," added CFO Peter Oppenheimer. "We established new all-time quarterly records for iPhone and iPad sales, significantly broadened our ecosystem, and generated Apple’s highest quarterly revenue ever."

Source: CNBC

[*T*]

Investor: ugh, they couldn't get 35 billion? Really? Setting records isn't enough anymore, they need to... Uh... Ya I don't know I would have been disappointed no matter what was said.
Investor 2: why?
Investor: the analyst told me to.

[ThuD Muffin]

This is rediculous. They did great! Can't make everyone happy...geez....

[Norb]

Yeah it's pretty ******* crazy... I think this might be the biggest dip I've seen the stock take and this is on a good earnings report.

[bmwraw8482]

This is what happens when expectations are expected to be exceeded by an excessive amount

[ThuD Muffin]

It's just crazy! Just about every company wishes they could report this kind of news....yet these "analysts"....keep blowing things out of proportion.

+1 Apple. Running a PROFITABLE enterprise.

[holyshnikes]

Mac sales are down. That's not a surprise. Most people are getting into the post Lc era where they want tablets. That's why you see a decrease of Mac sales and an increase in iPhone and ipad sales. Not rocket science.

[Mrteacup]

Mac sales are down. That's not a surprise. Most people are getting into the post Lc era where they want tablets. That's why you see a decrease of Mac sales and an increase in iPhone and ipad sales. Not rocket science.

Straight up, people shouldn't even compare sales for things like computers unless they are using a 5 year scale, one year has way to many variables