Apple revealed its Q2 2019 earnings report and despite some pessimism from analysts, the company managed to beat Wall Street’s expectations.
Revenue for the quarter came in at $58 billion, slightly above Apple’s own guidance to investors. Most of Wall Street analysts were predicting the company would only bring in between $54 billion to $57 billion for the quarter. Better yet, the company’s guidance for next quarter is stronger than expected, signifying that the doom-and-gloom may have been severely overstated.
“Our March quarter results show the continued strength of our installed base of over 1.4 billion active devices, as we set an all-time record for Services, and the strong momentum of our Wearables, Home and Accessories category, which set a new March quarter record,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We delivered our strongest iPad growth in six years, and we are as excited as ever about our pipeline of innovative hardware, software and services. We’re looking forward to sharing more with developers and customers at Apple’s 30th annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June.”
Apple’s revenue for Q2 2019 was 5% lower than it was during the same quarter last year. Many analysts thought that number would be even worse because of slumping iPhone sales. Apple’s services business picked up a lot of the slack.
iPhone revenue came in at $31.01 billion while services generated $11.45 billion. Mac revenue was at $5.51 billion. iPads created $4.8 billion, which was a lot higher than even the most bullish Apple analysts expected.
Shareholders will be happy to learn that the company has authorized an additional $75 billion for share repurchases. The company says it is confident in the value of its stock and is raising its quarterly dividend for the seventh time in less than seven years.
Q3 is usually Apple’s weakest quarter of the year, but the company is still predicting strong results. Here is the company’s guidance for its fiscal 2019 third quarter:
- revenue between $52.5 billion and $54.5 billion
- gross margin between 37 percent and 38 percent
- operating expenses between $8.7 billion and $8.8 billion
- other income/(expense) of $250 million
- tax rate of approximately 16.5 percent
