In case you haven’t heard, yesterday was the day that Mitt Romney finally released his tax returns — after several years of being urged to — revealing himself to be filthy rich. Later in the day, in what seemed to like an “oh yeah…you think HE has a lot of money” move, Apple announced that it more than doubled its profits in the last fiscal quarter on the strength of iPhone 4s sales, which were much greater than anyone anticipated.
To put Apple’s $13 billion net profit in perspective, consider this nugget from producer Eric Spiegelman: “Apple’s NET last QUARTER was $3 billion more than all of Hollywood’s GROSS box office receipts last YEAR.” And remember, Apple already had more cash reserves at one point last year than the entire U.S. government.
Reports the NY Times:
In a conference call with Wall Street analysts, Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, described the customer response to the new iPhone as “breathtaking” and said the company could not meet global demand for the device despite producing a record number of iPhones. “As it turns out, we didn’t bet high enough,” Mr. Cook said.
Apple, which is based in Cupertino, Calif., said its net income for the period rose 118 percent to $13.06 billion, or $13.87 a share, compared with net income of $6 billion, or $6.43 a share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 73 percent to $46.33 billion, from $26.74 billion a year ago. Apple’s results were inflated slightly because its 2011 holiday quarter included 14 weeks of sales, rather than the 13 weeks in 2010, because of a change by the company.
The results were better than the $10.08 a share in earnings and $38.85 billion in revenue expected by analysts, according to a poll by Thomson Reuters. Apple had forecast earnings of $9.30 a share and $37 billion for the quarter.
“It almost defies words in terms of the strength across all products,” said Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. “Everything about it eclipsed even the wildest expectations of analysts.”
I guess the “cheap Chinese slave labor making products consumers are addicted to” formula works, eh?