Apple Quarterly Revenue Hits $64 Billion, iPhone Sales Soft; Company Declines To Give Forward Guidance As Pandemic Spikes

Jill Goldsmith

29 October 2020 at 4:48 pm·2-min read

Tech giant Apple posted solid sales and profit for the fiscal fourth quarter ended in September, but CEO Tim Cook spooked investors a tad Thursday as the company declined to give guidance for the current first quarter.

Cook apparently told CNBC that uncertainty around the spread of the pandemic “made it a tough environment to guide into.” The shares were off more than 4% in after-hours trading.

Revenue of $64.7 billion was up from $6.37 billion. Earnings per share nosed higher to 73 cents from 70 cents. Revenue for services, which houses Apple TV and Apple TV+, beat expectations at $14.5 billion.

Apple breaks out sales for iPhone, weaker than anticipated at $26 billion, down $3 billion, iPads, Macs and Wearables — those trendy AirPods are booming and a new version is slated to be released in early 2021.

The giant led by Cook doesn’t give a separate line for Apple TV+, the streaming service that’s been making waves with some high=profile TV and film projects, or its Apple TV platform. The growing services business with TV, music, games and other non-device products is a focus that company growing to diversify its revenue stream.

For investors, the September quarter numbers may take a back seat to the main event — some color on the investors call around the demand trajectory for the newly unveiled iPhone 12 into the holiday quarter and 2021.

Wedbush Securities — citing supply chain checks out of Asia — anticipates at least 80 million iPhone 12s for the initial launch period. That’s way up from 65 million projected not that long ago.

“We have not seen a launch uptrend such as this in a number of years for Cupertino,” the firm said. It also calculated that some 350 million of 950 million iPhones worldwide are currently in an upgrade window.

Cook and Apple executives will discuss the numbers on a conference call 5 pm ET.

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