“Steve Jobs may not be sure how much the economic slump will hurt Apple, but he’s clear on this: It won’t be as bad as pessimists predict. And for the first time in eight years, he got on an analyst conference call to discuss quarterly results to make sure the point wasn’t lost on anyone,” Arik Hesseldahl reports for BusinessWeek.
“‘We may get buffeted by the waves a bit, but we’ll be fine,’ Jobs said on the call, following the release of Apple’s fiscal fourth-quarter results,” Hesseldahl reports.
“Fiscal fourth-quarter earnings were $1.26, a full 15¢ higher than analysts had predicted. And had Apple recorded sales of iPhones the same way it accounts for sales of Macs and iPods, per-share earnings would have been $2.69 on sales of $11.7 billion. ‘If this isn’t stunning, I don’t know what is,’ Jobs crowed,” Hesseldahl reports.
“But in the immediate aftermath of the results, it was Jobs’ comments about Apple being “fine” that carried most weight with investors. Apple shares, which had slumped more than 7% in regular trading, surged $12.84, or more than 14%, to 104.32 in extended trading after the results were released,” Hesseldahl reports.
“The appearance of Jobs on an earnings call was unusual. While he regularly appeared on earnings calls for Pixar before it was sold to Walt Disney (DIS), Jobs last appeared on an Apple earnings call in October 2000, and then later that year on another conference call with analysts in December, when the company warned about disappointing results. ‘What he’s trying to say, but not in so many words, is that he thinks the stock is undervalued,’ says Bill Kreher, analyst with Edward D. Jones,” Hesseldahl reports.
Full article here.