Apple Fiscal Second Quarter Earnings Beat Wall Street Expectations

Giant tech company Apple announced its fiscal second quarter (Q2) earnings on Thursday, beating Wall Street expectations, which was driven by stronger-than-anticipated iPhone sales.

For the quarter that ended April 1, 2023, Apple recorded $94.8 billion in revenue, and quarterly earnings per share of $1.52 remained unchanged. Both figures were higher than Wall Street expectations, leading to Apple’s shares rising around 2% in extended trading.

Speaking on the report, Apple CEO Tim Cook said, “We are pleased to report an all-time record in services and a March quarter record for iPhone despite the challenging macroeconomic environment and to have our installed base of active devices reached an all-time high. We continue to invest for the long term and lead with our values, including making major progress toward building carbon-neutral products and supply chains by 2030”.

It is worth noting that the driving force behind Apple’s quarterly performance was its increased iPhone sales, which amounted to a whopping $51.3 billion. This figure was higher than analyst expectations of $48.84 billion.

Investors King understands that a major reason for Apple’s improved performance in the reported quarter was China, as sales in the country were better than expected as consumer spending increased after Covid restrictions were lifted in 2022.

Meanwhile, Apple’s Mac and iPad businesses didn’t perform well. The company had already warned last quarter that both business segments would decline, partially due to parts shortages but they fell further than expected. Apple Mac sales were off more than 31% to just over $7.17 billion.

Cook disclosed that there are two reasons for that, one is the macro situation in general and the other is where the company is still comparing to the very difficult compare of the M1 MacBook Pro 14 and 16-inch from the year-ago quarter. The company’s CEO however disclosed that unlike other tech companies that have downsized their workforce, layoffs would be Apple’s last resort.