Apple Profit Climbs 13% On Strong IPhone Sales

(RTTNews) - Apple Inc. (AAPL) said Monday after the markets closed that its fourth quarter profit rose 13% from last year, driven by strong sales of its iPhones and Mac computers.

The company's quarterly earnings per share also came in above analysts' expectations as did its quarterly sales. At the same time, the company gave an upbeat revenue forecast for the current quarter, which includes the all important holiday season.

"Our strong business performance drove EPS growth of 20 percent and a record $13.3 billion in cash flow from operations in the September quarter," said Luca Maestri, Apple's CFO. "We continued to execute aggressively against our capital return program, spending over $20 billion in the quarter and bringing cumulative returns to $94 billion."

Apple also declared a cash dividend of $0.47 per share, payable on November 13 to shareholders of record on November 10.

Apple shares are currently gaining 1.75% in after hours trading after closing the day's regular trading session at $99.76, up $2.09 or 2.14%. Apple shares are up more than 24% this year.

Apple sold 39.3 million iPhones in the fourth quarter, up 16% from 33.8 million in the same quarter last year. The company last month unveiled two new bigger smartphones, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, which went on sale on September 19 with record breaking performance.

The company sold 5.5 million Macs in the quarter, up 21% from 4.6 million in the prior year quarter.

However, iPad sales for the fourth quarter fell 13% to 12.3 million units from 14.1 million units a year earlier. On October 16, Apple unveiled the next iteration of its tablets-- iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3, with both sporting Touch ID fingerprint sensor found on the iPhone, as the company aims to tap the holiday spending season.

Fourth quarter sales of the company's iPod music players dropped 24% to 2.6 million units.

For the fourth quarter, the company's America revenue surged 17% year-over-year, while Europe revenue increased 19% and Greater China revenue grew 1%. Japan revenue rose 5%, while rest of Asia-Pacific revenue fell 3% from a year earlier.

Last month, Apple also unveiled Apple Watch, featuring revolutionary new technologies and a pioneering user interface with a beautiful design that honors the rich tradition of precision watchmaking.

Apple's new Apple Pay service became available in the US from Monday, October 20. Apple Pay supports credit and debit cards from the three major payment networks, American Express, MasterCard and Visa, issued by the top US banks.

For the fourth quarter ended September 27, 2014, the Cupertino, California-based computing and electronics company reported net income of $8.5 billion or $1.42 per share, compared to $7.5 billion or $1.18 per share for the year-ago quarter.

On average, 42 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to earn $1.31 per share for the fourth quarter.

This marks the third straight quarter that the company has reported year-over-year profit increase following four quarters of profit declines.

Gross margin for the quarter improved to 38.0% from 37.0% in the prior year quarter, while operating margin for the quarter narrowed to 26.5% from 26.8% a year earlier.

Net sales for the fourth quarter rose 12.4% to $42.12 billion from $37.47 billion in the same quarter last year. Thirty-nine analysts had a consensus revenue estimate of $39.85 billion for the fourth quarter. International sales accounted for 60% of the quarter's revenue.

Looking forward, the company forecasts first quarter revenue of $63.5 billion to $66.5 billion. Analysts currently expect the company to post revenue of $63.52 billion for the first quarter.

Gross margin for the first quarter is expected between 37.5% and 38.5%.