By
Godfrey Benjamin
March 22nd, 2024
While figures on Mac and iPhone sales continue to decline, Apple keeps on increasing revenue figures and percentages in other parts of its business.
Apple has published an official report, detailing its earnings for the fourth quarter of its fiscal year which ended on September 28, 2019. According to the report, Apple reasonably exceeded analysts’ expectations on earnings per share as well as total revenue. Regardless, stocks remained relatively stagnant, in response to Apple’s announcement. Now they are traded at approximately 240$.
The report shows that Apple pulled in total revenue of $64 billion in the fourth quarter, a year over year increase of 2% from the same period in 2018, also surpassing the expectation set at $62.99 billion. It was also able to deliver $3.03 as earnings per share, above the expected $2.84.
Apple has however had a tough time growing its sales for both iPhones and Mac products. The company which still reports general sales for these products has discontinued reported unit its unit sales. Many experts suspect that this decision was made because there is a considerable reduction in these figures, year after year. For specifics, iPhone sales lost 9% and dropped to $33.36 billion in revenue, from $36.76 where it was in 2018 – which was itself a 9.2% drop. A similar loss was recorded with Mac sales, which saw a 5% loss to $6.99 billion.
Away from the losses, there were great gains in other departments. For example, iPad sales hit $4.66 billion, but even bigger than that is the growth recorded in the “Wearables, Home, and Accessories” department, which jumped 54% year over year, and hit $6.52 billion. Both figures are still considerable jumps from last year. In addition, the company has now grown its number of paid subscribers to more than 450 million, increasing from last year’s 330 million.
In its usual style of innovation, the company released a new type of AirPods which is expected to further increase the chances of growth in the already impressive “Wearables, Home, and Accessories” division. In a recent statement, Apple CEO Tim Cook has expressed excitement about the Q4 earnings being the best ever, and also quite a bit of confidence about the near future. Tim Cook stated:
“We concluded a groundbreaking fiscal 2019 with our highest Q4 revenue ever, fueled by accelerating growth from Services, Wearables and iPad. With customers and reviewers raving about the new generation of iPhones, today’s debut of new, noise-cancelling AirPods Pro, the hotly-anticipated arrival of Apple TV+ just two days away, and our best lineup of products and services ever, we’re very optimistic about what the holiday quarter has in store.”
Apple is also set to launch Apple TV+ and the company has forecasted a fourth-quarter revenue anywhere from $85.5 billion to $89.5 billion, higher than its Q1 2019 figure of $84.3 billion.
The board of directors has also announced a cash dividend to be paid to all Apple shareholders of the company’s common stock as on November 11’s close of business. The dividend has been set to $0.77 per share and will be paid 3 days after, on the 14th of November.