Major Apple assembler Foxconn said on Thursday output at its “iPhone City” factory in China had “basically returned to normal” and December revenue, down 12.3% year-on-year, marked the start of a recovery.
Production of Apple iPhones faced disruption ahead of Christmas and January’s Lunar New Year holidays, after the Chinese Communist Party’s quixotic “Zero COVID” lockdowns and restrictions prompted thousands of workers to protest and leave Foxconn’s factory lines in Zhengzhou.
Sarah Wu and Yimou Lee for Reuters:
Although lower compared with the previous year, the company said revenue for December was better than it expected and that a “gradual recovery” at its Zhengzhou plant had contributed to “double-digit growth” in revenue for its smart consumer electronics business compared to November.
A Foxconn source familiar with the matter, who could not be named because they were not authorised to speak to the press, said the growth in December compared to the month prior for its consumer electronics business, including smartphones, showed major client Apple did not cut orders.
Analysts say Foxconn assembles around 70% of iPhones, and the Zhengzhou plant produces the majority of its premium models including iPhone 14 Pro.
The company said in Thursday’s statement it expects first-quarter revenue “to be roughly in line with market consensus,” without elaborating.
Analysts expect first-quarter revenue to grow by 5.6% year-on-year, according to Refinitiv.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple did not cut orders.
Apple always adjusts production to match expected demand in calendar first quarter following the holiday sales period.
Don’t fall for normal operations twisted into “fake news” FUD planted ahead of earnings by fomenting shorts into complicit and/or gullible media outlets.
Instead, use these cases of blatantly obvious FUD as nice entry points in order to profit long term.
Please help support MacDailyNews. Click or tap here to support our independent tech blog. Thank you!
Shop The Apple Store at Amazon.
The current Apple stock price is unreasonably low. Having been a Apple stock investor for almost 20 years now, I have had enough experience with such price drops. Apple’s business is good. The problem has not been the demand but the supply which should be back on track now more or less. I’m a bit worried about the situation between China and Taiwan. If a war breaks out, that would certainly not be good.
China is at least several years away from even being prepared logistically for an invasion. Rest assured that Russia’s blunder in Ukraine, a failed land invasion of an adjacent country, gives the already extremely cautious ChiComs even more pause before deciding on a seaborne operation that could lead to catastrophic and unforeseeable consequences. They’ll wait years more if they have to until they detect sufficient Western weakness, a decade of inane TikTok vids broadcast into the brains of a future generation of soldiers might do the trick.
AAPL often faces “fake news” about production and supply troubles just around quarterly results. These stories often end up being false and suspiciously timed. AAPL is a profit making juggernaut and even a bad quarter would be the best ever results of most any other company traded on the market.
The global economy is the real concern. Rising tide might lift all boats but megatsunamis sink all ships. AAPL is most likely a better long term investment than the U.S. economy, and currently the U.S. economy is one of the best and most accessible place to invest in.
AAPL might go lower, but what is bad is not therefore worse.
AAPL formula for success = Buy low, hold, sale high.
Certainly putting 70% of your iPhone eggs in one Communist basket, spells trouble as we are seeing it now and could worsen in the future. The region is unstable, worst human rights abuses and lockdown of citizens on Earth while US relations tenable. Bring Apple manufacturing BACK to the United States, ‘o genius of supply chain, replacing the master of greed…