MacDailyNews presents live notes from Apple’s Q418 conference call

MacDailyNews presents live notes from Apple’s Q418 Conference Call with analysts starting at 5pm EDT/2pm PDT today.

Apple will provide live audio streaming of its Q418 Results Conference Call using Apple’s industry-leading QuickTime multimedia software.

The live webcast will begin at 2pm PDT/ 5pm EDT today here.

The company posted quarterly revenue of $62.9 billion, an increase of 20 percent from the year-ago quarter, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $2.91, up 41 percent. International sales accounted for 61 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

For Q119, Apple guided for revenue revenue between $89 billion and $93 billion.

Live notes from Apple’s Q318 Conference Call in reverse chronological order:

• End of conference call

• AAPL After hours: $207.24, -$14.98 (-6.74%) @ 6:02PM EDT

• Cook: If you go to the market and you push you cart up to the cashier they don’t charge based on number of units in the cart, they charge based on the contents of the cart
• Cook: Our installed base is growing at double digits; that’s a more significant metric for Apple than unit sales
• Apple will provide qualitative commentary where it is important to investors
• Apple’s objective is to increase unit sales for each product
• Apple does not believe providing unit sales is important for Apple at this point
• Starting with Q1, Apple will report gross margins for Services
• Maestri: Apple no longer reporting iPhone unit sales going forward

• Long-term, Cook cannot wait for the future in India
• We are manufacturing entry level iPhones in India and that is going well
• There are import duties in India for some products and we are giving lots of feedback
• Cook: We’ve had great productive discussion with the Indian government and Cook expects they will agree at some point to allow Apple retail Stores; the discussions are going quite well

• Cook: I feel very optimistic and positive about the ongoing trade discussions, some of which do need modernizing and updating
• Cook: Our products are manufactured pretty much everywhere

• We are in the early day of AR and it’ll get better and better
• Cook: The number of AR developers is growing rapidly

• Apple’s on the way to their goal of doubling Services fiscal 2016 revenue by 2020
• Apple continues to add and improve Services and plants to offer new Services over time
• The opportunity for Apple to monetize their Services business grows over time
• Maestri: We have a very large and growing installed base
• Cook: There is not obvious evidence in Xs and Xs Max sales data that customers were waiting for XR (there are different customers for Xs/Max vs. XR – MD Ed.)
• iPhone XR just launched, so we have very little data there so far
• Cook: The Xs and Xs Max got off to a really great start.

• The number of units sold during any quarter is not necessarily representative with the company’s performance
• Apple has launched an unprecedented number of new products; supply/demand balance carries some uncertainty
• Virtually every foreign currency has depreciated against the U.S. dollar in the last 12 months; Almost $billion of revenue headwinds
• Maestri: Launch timing of the new iPhones this year is essentially the reverse order vs. last year; this has an effect on our guidance

• Cook will not give away what Apple plans to do in health in the future
• Apple has contributed several non-monetized services in health
• Apple has intense interest in the health space
• Apple has a huge opportunity in health

• The subscriptions business is nearly as broad as the selection found in the App Store itself
• Apple is fine with some large developers truing to skirt App Store
• App Store provides users the best, most private, and safest place for users to get apps
• I do view any of this as part of a larger U.S. – China trade issue
• We have seen a slowdown in new game approvals in China due to a new regulatory environment
• Wearables in China was strong
• I would not put China in that category; grew 16% last quarter; iPhone in particular was very strong with double-digit growth
• Each one of the emerging markets has bit of a different story
• India was flat; Brazil was down somewhat
• Cook: Emerging markets that we’re seeing pressure in are markets like Turkey, India, Brazil, Russia where curries have weakened and in some case resulted in Apple having to raise prices to compensate

• Apple’s board of directors has declared a cash dividend of $0.73 per share of the Company’s common stock payable on November 15, 2018 to shareholders of record as of the close of business on November 12, 2018
• Apple is providing the following guidance for its fiscal 2019 first quarter:
– revenue between $89 billion and $93 billion
– gross margin between 38 percent and 38.5 percent
– operating expenses between $8.7 billion and $8.8 billion
– other income/(expense) of $300 million
– tax rate of approximately 16.5 percent before discrete items
• Maestri: The number of units sold of any product in any 90-day quarter is not representative of the health of our business
• Apple will start reporting revenue and cost of sales for Services beginning in Q119

• Nearly $90 billion returned to shareholders over the year (buybacks and dividends)
• Apple exited quarter with $122.6 billion dollars net cash
• iOS success in enterprise powered by partnerships with IBM and Salesforce
• Wearables growth of 50%
• 74% of business customers who plan to purchase a tablet plan to purchase iPad
• Apple iPad has 60% share of U.S.tablet market
• Nearly 50% of iPad purchasers during the quarter were new to iPad
• Active installed Mac base at all-time high of 100 million users
• Strong Mac growth in emerging markets
• Mac: Great response to MacBook Pro models

• Over 330 million paid subscription, an increase of 50% over the last year
• 27% Services growth YOY
• Service: Best quarter ever, revenue of $10 billion
• 451 Research: U.S. iPhone satisfaction 98%
• Strong performance of iPhone X, 8 and 8 Plus along with successful launch of iPhone Xs and Xs Plus during the quarter
• Quarterly revenue of $62.9 billion, an increase of 20 percent from the year-ago quarter
• New revenue and earnings record in every quarter of fiscal 2018
• Luca Maestri: We are extremely please to report record results for the quarter

• Apple now globally powered by 100 percent renewable energy
• “Everyone Can Create” being used by thousands of schools
• Cook: More than 5,000 schools and colleges are now using Apple’s free “Everyone Can Code” curriculum

• 506 stores soon to be open, almost half of which are located outside the U.S.
• 74,000 kids hosted at Apple Camp at Apple Stores
• Today at Apple: hosted over 250,000 session in Q418
• Apple Retail posted record results. Biggest year ever

• Apple can make meaningful contributions in the heart space
• ECG app will be available later this year to U.S. users of Apple Watch Series 4
• Apple Watch has become an essential part of people’s lives
• Cook talks about new products introduced at October 30th event
• All-time quarterly record for Mac revenue ($7.411 billion)
• 60% of all U.S. retail locations now support Apple Pay
• Cook: iPad Pro is the ultimate creativity and productivity device
• New iPad Pro is unrivaled in it’s versatility and performance
• ARKit 2 is a major upgrade
• Just last week, we began shipping iPhone XR
• This year we shipped our 2 billionth iOS device, celebrated the 10th anniversary of the App Store and achieved the strongest revenue and earnings in Apple’s history
• This was our best September quarter ever
• Strongest revenue and earnings in Apple’s history
• Tim Cook: “I just got back from Brooklyn.”
• Start of conference call

• AAPL After hours: $212.76, -$9.46 (-4.26%) @ 5:01PM EDT

• “Shares of Apple fell 4 percent immediately following the release, as the company missed shipment estimates on iPhones and offered light guidance.” – Sara Salinas, CNBC

• AAPL After hours: $213.16, -$9.06 (-4.08%) @ 4:49PM EDT

• Awaiting start of conference call

SEE ALSO:
Apple beats Street with another record-breaking quarter – November 1, 2018