Apple booked $109.4bn and the stock still fell — the problem is what comes next
Apple closed its fiscal third quarter with $109.4bn in revenue, up 16%, and $29.8bn in profit. It was the guidance for the current quarter that took the shine off.
Some quarters a company beats everybody and loses anyway. That was Apple’s: $109.4bn in revenue, up 16% on last year, $29.8bn in profit and earnings per share of $2.02 against the roughly $1.89 analysts had penciled in. The stock dropped the moment the market got to the second half of the release.
How much did Apple make this quarter?
$109.4bn, driven mainly by iPhone and Mac, with profit growing faster than revenue. It is the kind of quarter any company would sign for sight unseen.
Why did Apple’s shares fall?
Because the market does not pay for the quarter just gone, it pays for the one ahead. Apple guided to revenue growth of 9% to 11% next quarter, below what Wall Street had assumed, and flagged supply-chain constraints — specifically in getting hold of advanced chip components. Translated: it may not be able to build everything it could sell.
Does any of this touch Europe?
It does, if indirectly. The squeeze on advanced semiconductors is the same pressure pushing the European Union to fund its own manufacturing and compute capacity, an effort Portugal has entered with a bid for an AI gigafactory in Sines. When the world’s largest company says out loud that it is short of chips, the European argument stops being theoretical.
For anyone holding an iPhone rather than the stock, the practical read is simpler: a quarter with component constraints usually means longer delivery times and less room for discounting when a new generation lands. The full figures are published in Apple’s newsroom.
By Oliver Grant
Image: TungLawWanG / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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