“Apple Computer surged 8 percent Thursday as sales of more than 2 million iPod digital music players helped lift the company’s fourth-quarter net income to more than twice what it earned a year ago,’ Rex Crum reports for CBS.MarketWatch. “‘The investments we have made are starting to pay off through higher revenue and operating margins,’ said Peter Oppenheimer, chief financial officer of Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple, on a conference call with analysts.”
Crum reports, “Apple’s shares rose $3.13, or 7.9 percent, to $42.88 in recent trading, after the company said it earned $106 million, or 26 cents a share, on revenue of $2.35 billion for the three months ended Sept. 25. During the fourth quarter of fiscal 2003, Apple reported net income of $44 million, or 12 cents, on revenue of $1.72 billion. Excluding $4 million in aftertax restructuring charges, Apple earned $110 million, or 27 cents a share, and thus beat the average estimates of analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call amounting to a profit of 18 cents a share on $2.15 billion in revenue. Operating margins climbed above 5 percent.”
“The company’s forecast-beating results prompted a raft of positive broker comment and earnings estimates that were revised higher,” Crum reports. “Apple said it shipped 836,000 Macintosh computers, up from 787,000 a year ago. Oppenheimer said that iPod sales are bringing new customers to the Macintosh. ‘We continue to sell still, (in) retail stores today, close to 50 percent of computer sales are to people who are either buying the PC for the first time are or new to (the) Mac,’ Oppenheimer said ‘And I think one of the big reasons is the halo effect that the iPod and music is having.’ Merrill Lynch said it is because of this so-called ‘halo effect’ that it believes the positive impact on Mac sales may still be coming. The broker raised its price target on Apple to $49 from $44 and lifted its earnings estimate for fiscal 2005 to $1.20 a share from 95 cents.”
Full article here.
Don’t you wish you bought it at $13??
Bling, Bling!!!
I Did
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Earlier this year, my wife and I were looking at our investment portfolio and we decided to move some money around. One of the main thoughts from The Motley Fool (not the analysts that say that Apple is dying, but the original founding brothers) is to invest in something you know.
We saw Apple as a forward thinking company with a lot of potential, so we bought. Needless to say, it turned out to be a good investment.
I do not use my real nick name for this post but since everyone around me at the time told me I was crazy… well, I got 2000 AAPL shares with prices between $14 and 18$.
After that all I save monthly goes into AAPLs.
Time to brag now!
I have a big smile because all the wise people around me know I double my investment. They put NADA on AAPL. LOL, some put on MS. ROFLMAO.
There, now I will continue with my nick here (it is just too well known).
And now – at 1:23 – Apple is trading at $44.87, and has a market cap of $17.04 billion.
Sadly (not), Sun Microsystems only has a cap of $13.368 billion and Adobe (who I still bear a grudge towards over the whole Windows endorsement thing) are even further behind on $12.307 billion.
Interesting to note that if Apple continues to generate around $500 million in organic cash every quarter, it could purchase around 30-50% of Adobe in three years.
But I still think they should purchase EMI Music � what could be nicer than owning the phonographic copyright to all of the Beatles, plus being the licensee of the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd.
Well done Ony Guy from Finland
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(Too obvous)
I purchased 10,000 shares of AAPL when it was just under $14 a pop. Needless to say, things are looking up now… net profit of $300,000.