Apple earnings beat expectations with share prices rising in extended trading
The company managed to beat expectations by selling fewer, but more expensive, iPhones
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Your support makes all the difference.Shares of Apple have jumped after the company posted quarterly results that beat out Wall Street targets while forecasting revenue above expectations in the current quarter.
Those results were fuelled by the sales of their signature product - the iPhone - and revenue services such as the App Store, Apple Music, and iCloud.
The company saw growth in its stock of 3.3 per cent in after hours trading.
The immediate spike in shares was not enough, however, to make Apple the first company to be valued at one trillion, but the company has come very close to that moniker and continued growth in future quarters could potentially push it over that line.
The company was able to beat sales estimates by selling fewer iPhones, and instead getting the more expensive models to fly off the shelves, analysts say. Even so, the company sold slightly fewer units with 41.3 million sold compared to the expectation that 41.8 million would be sold.
Apple’s postings showed that the average iPhone sold cost $724 (£552), far outweighing previous expectations that the average price would come in at $694, according to the data providing service FactSet. During the quarter, an Apple spokesperson told Reuters, the best selling model was the IPhone X, which retails for $999.
Apple, the world’s most valuable technology company, forecast revenues of between $60b and $62bn for its fourth fiscal quarter, a figure that will include any advance sales of the company’s coming new models of iPhone.
The earnings report is good news for the technology company, which last week avoided a tech sector sell-off that saw shareholders dropping stake in Facebook, Twitter, and Netflix amid concerns about the future growth of the companies.
While Apple has a market valuation above $900bn, the company could be facing rocky roads ahead if President Donald Trump imposes tariffs that impact the import of its devices into the US. Mr Trump has yet to say exactly which product categories he might target with tariffs on Chinese goods, but the taxes could potentially impact products like the Apple Watch, one of the company’s main growth drivers.
Reuters contributed to this report
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