MacDailyNews presents live notes from Apple’s Q213 Conference Call

13 years ago

MacDailyNews presents live notes from Apple’s Q213 Conference Call with analysts starting at 5pm EDT/2pm PDT today.

Apple today beat Street on EPS and revenue, posting EPS of $10.09 and revenue of $43.6 billion vs. the analysts’ consensus of $9.97 and $42.3 billion, respectively.

Apple also more than doubled their quarterly dividend to $3.05 per common share, payable on May 16, 2013 to shareholders of record as of the close of business on May 13, 2013.

Live notes from Apple’s Q213 Conference Call in reverse chronological order:

• After-hours AAPL: -$0.18, -0.04%, to $405.95 @ 6:04PM EDT

• End of conference call

• Apple now paying iOS developers a total of more than $1 billion each quarter
• Cook: We see incredible usage of iOS in every study we see; staggering compared to competitors

• Cook admits iMac mistake: If we could run it over, I would have announced iMac after the turn of year because customers had to wait too long.

• Cook: iOS in enterprise; 95% of Fortune 500; 89% of global 500
• Cook on Mac: market has a lot of life in it; we are going to continue making the best personal computers on the planet; continue to invest in Mac

• Cook: Because we are not fragmented like our competition, we can update iOS very efficiently and to the majority of customers
• Oppy: We have the largest and broadest ecosystem: App Stores in 155 countis, iTunes Stores in 110 countries, $16 billion run-rate on the iTunes Stores. Apple sees opportunity that they wil invest in tremendously.

• Cook: My view continues to be that iPhone 5 has the absolute best display in the industry. And we always strive to create the very best display for our customers. And some customers value large screen size, others value also other factors such as resolution, color quality, white balance, brightness, reflectivity, screen longevity, power consumption, portability, compatibility with apps and many things. Our competitors had made some significant trade-offs in many of these areas in order to ship a larger display, we would not ship a larger display iPhone while these trade-offs exist.

• Cook on 5-inch smartphones: iPhone 5 has the absolute best display in the industry. We always strive to create the very best display in the industry. Competitior have mad signifact trade-offs for larger displays. Apple would not ship larger displays while these tradeoffs exist (battery life, app compatibility, display quality, portability, etc.)

• Oppy: There are many factors than can affect gross margins. We do not forecast beyond June. The way we think about gross margin: We are managing the business for the long-term. iPad mini is priced with lower margins than the corporate norm because Apple believes in the tablet market long-term. Apple willing to make short-term tradeoffs where Apple sees long-term potential. Over $4 billion in services for the quarter for the first time.

• Cook: That said, we have made iPhone 4 even more affordable for first time buyers; we’re continuing to do this in other markets; allows new customrs to get into the ecosystem with a really, really phenomenal product
• Cook: market share (unit sales) is not the only measure of health. Customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, customer repurchase rates, ecosystem commerce, usage states are also extremely important. Appel is all about customer experience and enriching lives.
• Cook: IDC estimates tablet market this quarter declined 30% sequentially, but Apple iPad only declined 15% in the after-Christmas quarter. That would mean a share pickup for Apple in post-Christmas quarter

• After-hours AAPL: +$9.87, +$2.43%, to $416.00 @ 5:40PM EDT

• Cook cites “new product categories” as one area for potential growth
• Cook: “We’ve got some really great stuff coming in the fall and across all of 2014.”

• Investors have urged the company to borrow rather than repatriate overseas cash to avoid incurring heavy U.S. taxes

• Oppy: Share buyback begins this month and runs for the next 38 months

• Cook: Smartphone market has always been competitive. In the beginning was RIM and, of course, today our top competitor onthe hardware side would be Samsung married to Google for the OS. We feel we have the best product by far. We are very confident in our product pipeline in hardware, software, and services. I fell very good about our competive position.

• Cook: “China has an unusually large number of potential first-time buyers and that is not lost on us.”
• Cook: We see significant opportunity in China. We have 11 stores, hope to double then in next two years.
• Cook: If you look at China revenue on sell-thru basis, China revenue up approx. 18% YOY
• Cook: 138% iPad growth in China; new records for iPhone and iPad sell-thru
• Cook: Best quarter ever in greater China, $8.8 billion, up 11% YOY
• Gross margin 37.5% was at low-end of Apple’s guidance range – due to getting iPad mini into 4-6 inventory range; sold more iPads than they expected

• Oppy: Apple remains very confident in their product pipeline.

• Apple will return approximately $30 billion to shareholders
• Apple has significant revenues offshore that current U.S. tax laws prevents return of that capital
• Apple will access the debt markets.
• Quarterly dividend incrased by 15% to $3.05 per share; Appel is one of the largest dividend payers in the world
• BoD has upped buyback from $10 billion to $60 billion; largest buyback in any company in history; starts this month

• 402 total Apple Retail Stores worldwide at end of quarter

• iOS platform offers much more secure platform. 97% of malware on Android platform; the rest on Symbian and other non-iOS operating systems
• iOS in enterprise: Goog Technology: 77% of all activations by corporate customers

• Oppy recounts iOS app developers’ successes

• Sales for Apple App Store were 74% of all app store sales for March quarter
• 850,000 iOS apps; including 350,000 developed for iPad

• Strong iTunes sales helped Apple achieve, for the first time, more than $4 billion in quarterly revenue from software and services
• iTunes Store now 10 years old; surpassed quarterly billing of $4 billion for quarter, that’s $16 billion annual run-rate

• iPod touch continues to account for over 50% of all iPod sales
• Oppy: Macs in 4-5 week target range of channel inventory

• After-hours AAPL: +$18.95, +4.67%, to $425.08 @ 5:17PM EDT

• Oppy: ChangeWave shows 96% satisfaction rate among iPad customers

• Oppy: Overwhelming number of iPad mini users are first-time iPad buyers
• Oppy: We are extremely happy with sales of both iPad and iPad mini.

• Cisco BYOD: iOS devices connecting to corporate network up 50% over past year

• Kantar: 95% loyalty for iPhone; #1 in satisfaction from JD Power for 9th consecutive time
• IDC: iPhone #1 or #2 in over 50% of the countries IDC tracks
• IDC Japan: iPhone #1 for all 2012 and Q42012 in both handsets and smartphones. 1st time a non-Japanese company held #1 for entire year

• This is the largest single share repurchase authorization in history
• Buybacks upped to $60 billion; to be completed by end of calendar 2015
• More than doubling capital return

• Cook: “We’ve got a lot more surprises in the works.”
• Cook: Apple has the highest loyalty and customer satisfaction in the business
• Cook: Our teams are hard at work on exciting new products and services which we plan to introduce this fall and into 2014

• Cook: We can’t control share price and we continue to focus on long-term and on making the best products and services; things we can control
• Cook: The decline in AAPL share price has been “VERY FRUSTRATING TO ALL OF US.”
• Cook: iPad mini strategically priced with lower margins
• Cook: We acknowledge that our growth has slowed and or margins have decreased

• After-hours AAPL +$22.51, +5.54%, to $428.64 @ 5:03PM EDT

• Apple is among the largest dividend payers in the world, with annual payments of about $11 billion
• Board has approved a 15% increase to quarterly dividend. $3.05 per common share, payable on May 16, 2013 to shareholders of record as of the close of business on May 13, 2013

• Apple’s Q313 guidance:
– revenue between $33.5 billion and $35.5 billion
– gross margin between 36 percent and 37 percent
– operating expenses between $3.85 billion and $3.95 billion
– other income/(expense) of $300 million
– tax rate of 26%

• Cash: $12.5 billion from operations during the quarter; ending cash balance of $145 billion (YKBAID)
• Cook in earnings statement: “Our teams are hard at work on some amazing new hardware, software, and services and we are very excited about the products in our pipeline.”
• All-time record March quarter revenue ($43.6 billion)

• “Just under 4 million Macs” vs. 4 million YOY
• 19.5 million iPads vs. 11.8 million YOY
• 37.4 million iPhones vs. 35.1 million YOY

• International sales: 66% of quarter’s revenue
• Gross margin was 37.5 percent compared to 47.4 percent YOY

• EPS: $10.09 per diluted share
• quarterly net profit of $9.5 billion
• quarterly revenue of $43.6 billion

• After-hours AAPL: +$18.30, +4.51%, to $424.43 @ 4:53PM EDT
• Awaiting start of call.

Apple will provide live streaming of its Q2 2013 financial results conference call beginning at 2pm PDT/5pm EDT on April 23, 2013 at www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/earningsq213.