Apple's Q1 fiscal 2005 profits are far better than expected - highest ever for A

On Wednesday Apple reported its profits for the first quarter of fiscal 2005 that ended on Dec. 25. Like we mentioned before Apple's profits were indeed far better than expected.

An analyst expected Apple's earnings would be 49 cents per share on a revenue of $3.18 billion but he wasn't really close to the truth. Apple's earnings for Q1 were 70 cents per share on a revenue of $295 million. Apple's sales were accounted at $3.49 billion.

This is a lot higher than last year in which the company earned only 17 cents per share on a revenue of $63 million. So Apple's earnings have fourfold, and their sales have increased with 74 percent from $2.01 billion last year to $3.49 during Q1 of this fiscal year.

The company said that the sales of their iPods have more than fivefolded to 4.58 million and that it shipped more than 1.1 million Macintosh computers during the quarter, which is 26 percent more than last year.

“We are thrilled to report the highest quarterly revenue and net income in Apple’s history,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’ve sold over 10 million iPods to date and are kicking off the new year with a slate of innovative new products including iPod shuffle, Mac mini and iLife ’05.”

“We’re pleased to report 74 percent revenue growth, 26 percent Mac unit growth and 525 percent iPod unit growth,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the second quarter of fiscal 2005, we expect revenue of about $2.9 billion and earnings per diluted share of about $.40.”

Shares of Apple ended the day up 90 cents, or 1.4 percent, at $65.46 on the Nasdaq, but lost 20 cents to trade at $65.26 in recent after-hours activity.

Source: Forbes