Apple Earnings Recap

I didn’t get to this yesterday, but I wanted to do a quick run-through of the numbers from Apple’s earnings report that I talked about on Tuesday.

Apple slightly beat my target of $1.23 earnings per share, posting $1.28 for the quarter. Good news for shareholders.

Revenue for the quarter was $37.4 billion, slightly below the $38 billion I was looking for, but pretty much right on target.

Again, when it came to iPhone sales, Apple’s quarterly number of 35.2 million was pretty much right in line with the 36 million I was hoping to see, and that number represents a 13% gain year-over-year.

The iPad sales number was the biggest disappointment of the day for shareholders, as the 13.3 million number fell well short of the 14.5 million I was hoping to see and represented a 9% drop in Y-O-Y sales.

And what about the most important number of all? Since the earnings release, AAPL shares are up 2.2%. Shareholders seem to have shrugged off the iPad numbers and be focusing more on the expanded gross margins, which grew from 36.9% to 39.4% Y-O-Y.

With no major news announcements akin to the buyback/dividend increase and the stock split announced in last quarter’s earnings, this quarters Apple earnings were not all that exciting, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve written before that making money is boring. 99% of being a successful trader is watching and waiting, and that’s what I will continue to do with Apple.

I want to take a minute to thank all the people that bought my book this past weekend while it was on sale. I hope you enjoy reading.

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