Apple surprises Wall Street with record-breaking Q3 profits

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Apple is a money-making machine.
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While the rest of the tech industry’s earnings are in a slump, Apple just posted its biggest Q3 earnings report ever.

Investors were expecting Apple to post at least $51 bilion in revenue, but the iPhone-maker has come away with $53.3 billion in income, marking a 17% increase from last June quarter. iPhone sales came in at 41.3 million units sold for the quarter which has Apple CEO Tim Cook absolutely stoked.

“We’re thrilled to report Apple’s best June quarter ever, and our fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth,” said Tim Cook in a statement. “Our Q3 results were driven by continued strong sales of iPhone, Services and Wearables, and we are very excited about the products and services in our pipeline.”

The higher-than-expected earnings could push Apple toward becoming the first trillion dollar company. Apple shares need to hit the $204 mark to make it happened.

High-priced iPhones continued to sell well with the iPhone ASP hitting $724. iPad sales came in at 11.6 million units. Mac sales were down 13% at 3.7 million units sold.

Apple’s enormous cash pile actually shrank by $23 billion during the quarter, giving the company $243 billion in cash and liquid assets. A lot of that cash has gone to investors. $53.6 billion has been spent on stock buybacks over the last 9 months.

Earnings per share was at $2.34. Some of the most optimistic analysts only predicted $2.26 per share. International sales accounted for 60 percent of the quarter’s revenue. Services revenue was up 31% YOY at $9.54 billion, which was also better than Wall Street’s expectations.

Services revenue The company projects that it will bring in between $60 billion and $62 billion in revenue during Q4 2018.

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