t’s that time again, when public companies start announcing just how much they’ve managed to earn in the third quarter of fiscal year 2012 while Wall Street and other analysts make sense of the numbers that have been presented to them. Apple is one such company turning in its quarterly earnings report, and as one of the more popular corporations out there, whatever it has to say is definitely big news.
Unsurprisingly, the maker of so many popular devices on the market has managed to make a lot of money yet again in the past few months since its last report, boasting a revenue of $35 billion and net profit of $8.8 billion. Meanwhile, it has a dividend of $2.65 per share, with diluted earnings of about $7.65, and will start paying its stockholders come August 16. For those unused to business jargon, a company’s revenue is its income from its usual activities, which in Apple’s case is selling its products and services to customers, and net profit is exactly how much the company has earned, found when the total expenses are subtracted from its revenue.
How did it manage to rake in this much money? According to CEO Tim Cook, the company had managed to sell 17 million iPads, 84% more than the last quarter which really helped with the profits. Aside from the iPads, 26 million iPhones, 4 million Macs and 6.8 million iPods were sold during the quarter as well.
However, Wall Street was less than impressed with Apple’s efforts, saying that it fell short of expectations. While its previous revenue was $28.6 billion and net profit was $7.3 billion, analysts were expecting a net profit of about $10.36 billion and a revenue of $37.2 billion. It may have been a close one, but to Wall Street, it’s still a miss. They say this failure is because customers are waiting till later to buy an iPhone because of the latest generation due for release later this year.
It’s not over for Apple yet though, as it’s gearing up to release the updated line of Macbooks, iOS 6, the iPhone 5 and OS X Mountain Lion very soon. In fact, the OS for desktops and laptops will be releasing tomorrow, and the mobile platform in the fall.
A live stream of Apple’s Q3 conference call will start on July 24 at 2:00 PM PDT on this page for those who want to hear it firsthand. For those who cant make it, it will be available for replay for two weeks.
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