Apple today reported that profits slipped slightly, but sales grew despite the economic disruptions caused by reactions to the global COVID-19 pandemic. The company promised shareholders billions more in stock repurchases and increased dividends.
The company topped earnings and revenue expectations for the March quarter, led by a significant beat by the services segment, but Apple declined to give a forecast for the current quarter due to COVID-19 uncertainties.
Apple also announced that it would be boosting its buyback program by $50 billion, though this was a smaller increase than the $75 billion and $100 billion that it added to the program in 2019 and 2018, respectively.
The iPhone maker posted fiscal second-quarter net income of $11.25 billion, or $2.55 a share, down slightly from $11.56 billion, or $2.46 a share, a year prior, but easily higher than estimates as the FactSet consensus modeled $2.24 a share. Apple’s total revenue grew slightly to $58.31 billion from $58.02 billion, while analysts were expecting $54.78 billion.
As part of its annual capital-return update, Apple announced it would also increase its quarterly dividend by 6% to 82 cents a share. The company upped its dividend 5% in 2019 and 16% in 2018.
MacDailyNews Take: In today’s conference call, Apple CFO, Luca Maestri said there was still some $40 billion remaining from the last capital return program authorization, so add that to the new $50 billion in buybacks announced today. That makes for quite a sizable share repurchase program that will benefit Apple shareholders along with the dividend raise.