Apple (AAPL) shares moved firmly higher Friday trading after a solid set of fourth quarter earnings offset a muted holiday quarter sales outlook for the world's biggest tech company.
"We did better than we anticipated, in spite of the fact that foreign exchange was a significant negative for us," CFO Luca Maestri said, noting that December quarter sales would suffer a a 10 percentage point year-on-year impact from the surging U.S. dollar.
The world's biggest tech company also said holiday quarter revenues would slow from September levels, citing in part a 10 percentage point year-on-year impact from the surging U.S. dollar, which is trading near 20-year highs against its global peers.
Apple said earnings for the three months ending in September, the group's fiscal fourth quarter, were pegged at $1.29, up 4% from the same period last year. Group revenues, Apple said, rose 2% from last year to an all-time high of $90.15 billion, just ahead of analysts' estimates of $88.9 billion.
Apple said iPhone revenues rose 9.6% from last year to $42.62 billion, missing the $43.2 billion Street forecast. China sales rose 6.25% to $15.47 billion, Apple said, while revenues from its key services business rose just 5% to $19.19 billion.
Net sales for the Mac were up 25% to $11.51 billion, while wearable, home and accessories sales, which include the AppleWatch, rose 9.8% to $9.65 billion.
"Over the past year, despite a range of challenges facing the world, our teams have come together in incredible ways to drive unparalleled innovation and deliver again and again for our customers, " CEO Tim Cook told investors on a conference call late Thursday. "For the September quarter, we reported record revenue of $90.1 billion, which was better than we anticipated despite stronger-than-expected foreign currency headwinds."
Apple shares were marked 4.33% higher in early Friday trading following the earnings release to change hands at $151.15 each.
Multiple media reports in early September suggested Apple was facing waning iPhone demand and had instructed suppliers and assemblers to pare back plans to boost production of the newly-launched iPhone 14 by as many as 6 million units, opting instead to chase a target of 90 million -- roughly in-line with last year's tally and its early summer forecast -- for the second half of this year.
Earlier this month, however, the International Data Corporation's closely-tracked survey showed global PC shipments fell 15% from last year to around 74.3 million units, lead by a 27.8% decline for HP Inc. HPQ. Apple, however, notched a 40.2% gain for the three months ending in September, with shipments rising to just over 10,000 units of is Mac personal computers.
