By Grant Shepherd
Apple has just announced its financial results for the fiscal 2009 third quarter and has recorded its best non-holiday quarter revenue and earnings result in the company’s history.
According to its fiscal 2009 third quarter ending 27 June, Apple posted revenue of $8.34 billion and a net quarterly profit of $1.23 billion. This is compared to revenue of $7.46 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.07 billion in the year-ago quarter.
Apple also boasted gross margin of 36.3 per cent up from 34.8 per cent for the same period last year. In addition to this, international sales accounted for 44 per cent of the quarter’s revenue.
According to the results announcement, 2.6 million Macintosh computers were sold during the quarter, which is a four per cent unit increase from last year. iPods saw a decline over the period with a seven per cent drop in units to 10.2 million.
But the real mover over the period was the iPhone which jumped a massive 626 per cent over the same period a year ago selling 5.2 million units.
“We’re making our most innovative products ever and our customers are responding,” said Steve Jobs, Apple CEO.
“We’re thrilled to have sold over 5.2 million iPhones during the quarter and users have downloaded more than 1.5 billion applications from our App Store in its first year.”
Peter Oppenheimer, Apple CFO, was also very pleased with the financial performance of the company.
“We’re extremely pleased to report record non-holiday quarter revenue and earnings and quarterly cash flow from operations of $2.3 billion,” he said.
“Looking ahead to the fourth fiscal quarter of 2009, we expect revenue in the range of about $8.7 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share in the range of about $1.18 to $1.23.”