Apple earnings up

Sales of high-end desktops, notebooks and iPod digital music players have helped Apple post year-over-year revenue and earnings increases for its fiscal fourth quarter and the US financial year ended September 27.

Apple on October 15 reported a US$44 million profit or 11 cents a share for the quarter. A year ago it lost US$45 million or 12 cents a share. Its fourth quarter 2003 earnings topped a First Call/Thomson Financial consensus forecast of about seven cents a share.

Fourth quarter sales for 2003 totalled nearly US$1.72 billion, up 19 percent year over year from US$1.44 billion. Gross margins rose to 26.6 percent from 26.4 percent over that period.

Apple shipped 787,000 Macintosh computers in fourth-quarter 2003, up seven percent from 734,000 in the year-earlier quarter. PowerBook notebooks were up 203 percent by unit and Power Mac desktops up 26 percent.

Apple also sold 336,000 iPod units in the quarter, up 140 percent from 53,000 a year earlier. Revenue from peripheral sales was up 55 percent and software up 13 percent.

Unit sales for iMac desktops fell 20 percent and 25 percent for iBook notebooks year over year. For the year, Apple said it earnt US$69 million on revenue of US$6.21 billion, up from a US$65 million profit on US$5.74 billion in sales for fiscal 2002.

'It was a great new-product quarter for Apple,' Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement. In the quarter, the company unveiled a next-generation Power Mac G5 desktop, faster PowerBook laptops and slimmer iPods with more storage capacity, he noted.

'Plus, we're delivering Panther, the next major release of Mac OS X, later this month and we'll have some exciting news regarding our music efforts [October 16],' Jobs claimed.

Apple is expected to launch a Windows version of its iTunes Music Store pay-per-song service in the US this week and the company plans to ship Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, its next-generation operating system, on October 24.

Apple noted its fourth-quarter 2003 results include an after-tax investment gain of US$6 million, an upwards accounting adjustment of US$3 million related to a stock repurchase agreement and gains on a settlement of the stock repurchase agreement of US$6 million.

Without those items, earnings would have been US$29 million or eight cents a share, the company said

Apple CFO Fred Anderson said in a statement that the company had exceeded its profit and revenue forecasts for the quarter. 'Looking ahead to the first quarter of fiscal 2004, we expect a sequential increase in revenue to about US$1.9 billion and a slight sequential increase in GAAP earnings relative to the September quarter,' Anderson said.