Apple's revenue for the fourth quarter of the fiscal year 2018 hit $62.9 billion, the company revealed on Tuesday, with earnings-per-share of $2.91 growing year-on-year, and iPhone sales of 46.9 million units translating to massive ASPs of $793.
Due to the announced later today, Apple's fourth quarter results are expected by analysts to be a high point among tech company financial reports, with revenue buoyed by the introduction of the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max and the product line's growing average selling price.
Apple's quarterly results report arriving on Thursday should encourage a great December quarter, both Loup Ventures and UBS suggest, with the average selling price of iPhones anticipated to grow for the important holiday shopping period.
Analysts have offered more opinions on Tuesday's Apple special event, with J.P. Morgan and Rosenblatt Securities issuing generally positive notes to investors about the refreshed MacBook Air and Mac mini, but were more enthused about the prospects of the new iPad Pro.
The Apple special event went "largely as expected," claims Loup Ventures analyst Gene Munster, but announcements made during the presentation, such as the launch of the iPad Pro, were "incrementally positive" to Apple's overall story.
Jefferies has initiated coverage of Apple Stock with a prediction of massive gains over the next year, based on not just iPhone sales, but also the Services revenue that grows as Apple's customer base increases.
The demand for the iPhone XS is being unappreciated by investors, analysts for J.P. Morgan suggest a few days before Apple issues its quarterly results, with the average selling price of iPhones anticipated to exceed earlier predictions due to the higher price of the larger model.
Over the course of the last decade, Apple has become more and more intertwined with Saudi Arabia, and four months after its crown prince visited Apple Park, the regime appears to have carried out the murder of an American journalist. Why Apple should do all it can to disengage from the Saudi regime.
Preorders for the iPhone XR are better than the equivalents for the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max, according to Rosenblatt Securities' Jun Zhang, but that hasn't stopped the analyst from reducing expectations for the value-oriented iPhone release.
The iPhone XR will fare far better than the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus in terms of shipments, Robert Cihra of Guggenheim Securities predicts, but while the low cost could hurt the overall iPhone average selling price, the release will probably help drive demand and fourth quarter revenue.
Media personalities have been bending over backward to find a way to square the claims made by Bloomberg in its "China Hack" story with a series of strongly worded denials from Amazon and Apple insisting that the report was "wrong and misinformed." However, there is solid evidence that Bloomberg has previously published a series of false claims before, either from a lack of research coupled with bad perspective, or possibly to simply craft a dramatic narrative.
Billionaire David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital has disposed of all of its shares in Apple, due to fearing the potential retaliation from China against U.S. trade tariffs affecting imports, by imposing restrictions and other measures that could affect the iPhone producer in the country.
Samsung advises it will be reporting record operating profits in its upcoming quarterly results, but while seemingly a return to form for the South Korean giant, its earnings boost is partly due to supplying Apple OLED displays for the iPhone XS range.
Apple's highest-ranking executives last week received batches of restricted stock units as part of the company's incentives plan, with many leadership positions netting more than $30 million each.
Apple on Tuesday announced plans to report quarterly earnings for the fourth quarter of 2018 at the end of trading on Nov. 1, when company executives could reveal an initial glimpse at iPhone XS and XS Max sales performance.
Apple has set yet another record in the financial markets today, with the trillion-dollar company hitting $230.00 during trading and achieving a new all-time closing high of $229.28 on October 2.
Investment bank JP Morgan on Thursday initiated coverage on shares of Apple with an "Overweight" rating and $272 price target, saying it sees "considerable upside" for the company based on its leadership position in the smartphone market and the services it uses to amplify those revenues.
Benjamin Schachter of Macquarie Research expects that the Supreme Court's verdict on a long-running suit over developer's fees in the App Store will be heard soon, but the ruling won't come down until early 2019, and any possible financial impact is at least a year away.
Apple's iPhone earnings were over 3.6 times that of Samsung and over three times the profits of the top four brands in China, as the company sold 43 percent of all "premium" phones globally.
The day after Apple unveiled three new, pricey iPhones and a new Apple Watch, the move even further towards the premium segment was a focus of several analyst reports, with them all saying that Apple's earnings will hit new heights both from increased sales volume, and a higher average selling price per device.
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Mike Wuerthele
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Stephen Silver
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