Apple third quarter earnings: pandemic bump is far from over

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“Last year, we started selling iPhones in late September,” the company’s chief financial officer, Luca Maestri, said on a call to discuss its fiscal third quarter results. “This year, we project supply to be available a few weeks later.”

Maestri said Apple will again not release revenue forecasts for next quarter, “given the uncertainty around the world in the near term.”

Meanwhile, the company continues to rake in cash as the pandemic rages.

The company posted revenue of $59.7 billion in the three months ended in June, an 11% increase from the same period last year, it said Thursday.

Apple (AAPL) stock spiked more than 5% in after-hours trading. The company also announced a four-for-one stock split.

The blockbuster earnings for America’s most valuable company come as the country’s economy struggles with its first recession in more than a decade. Figures released earlier on Thursday showed that the US gross domestic product contracted 32.9% between April and June — its worst drop on record — as the pandemic ground most economic activity to a halt.

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Apple’s net income of $11.2 billion for the quarter represented a 12% increase from a year earlier.

“In uncertain times, this performance is a testament to the important role our products play in our customers’ lives and to Apple’s relentless innovation,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement, touting the company’s “record June quarter” that was driven by “double digit growth” in both products and services. International sales accounted for 60% of revenue for the quarter.

Apple users flocked to the company’s digital services amid global lockdowns, with Cook touting “all-time revenue records” for the App Store, Apple Music, video and cloud services as well as “elevated engagement” on iMessage, FaceTime and Siri. The company’s overall services revenue jumped 15% from the previous year to $13.2 billion, hitting a milestone.

“We are proud to announce that we have achieved our goal of doubling our fiscal 2016 services revenue six months ahead of schedule,” he said.

Apple has thus far managed to weather the pandemic. It posted record earnings for the last three months of 2019 even as the coronavirus ravaged its market and supply chains in China; continued to grow slightly in the first quarter of this year; and even launched several new products and services virtually in the midst of global lockdowns.

But the company has also had to shutter roughly a third of its US stores, after reopening and re-closing many of them, as coronavirus cases spike across several states.

Apple (AAPL) is one of four tech giants — along with Facebook (FB), Amazon (AMZN) and Google (GOOGL) — to report earnings on Thursday, barely 24 hours after their CEOs were grilled by Congress over allegations that their companies have become too dominant and are stifling competition.

Cook predominantly faced questions about Apple’s App Store and the commissions the company charges some apps to list on it.

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