Apple Quarter - The 3rd quarter Apple slightly better than expected
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple reported Tuesday quarterly earnings slightly above expectations, driven by strong sales of the iPhone, the flagship of the U.S. electronics giant, whose title gained more than 5% in trade after-hours trading.
At the end of the regular session on Wall Street, Apple's stock had closed down more than 1.7% in anticipation of bad figures for the third quarter of 2012-2013.
"It's good to see, for once, better than expected results. Profits are still down from a year to another. I think we need to wait for the launch of a new product before reversal of this trend, "said Daniel Ernst, an analyst at Hudson Square Research.
"The numbers are impressive iPhone-many million more than what was expected."
Over the three months to end-June, Apple said it has sold 31.2 million iPhone, a record for the period, against 26 million a year ago.
In contrast, the number of iPad shipments fell to 14.6 million against 17 million a year ago and the Mac computers from four million to 3.8 million.
In the third quarter of its fiscal year, Apple posted a net profit of $ 6.9 billion, resulting in earnings per share of $ 7.47, against $ 8.8 billion (9.32 dollars / share) a year ago .
The turnover stood at $ 35.3 billion, against 35 billion in the third quarter of 2011-2012.
Financial analysts had expected earnings per share of $ 7.32 and revenue of 35.02 billion, according to Thomson Reuters consensus I / B / E / S.
Within the scope including increased competition, Apple gross margin decreased by nearly six percentage points a year over year, from 42.8% in the third quarter of 2011-2012 to 36.9 % over the same period of the year.
For the fourth quarter, Apple expects revenue of between 34 and 37 billion dollars against 37.05 billion consensus.
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