[quick notes on Apple’s quarterly results and conference call]
Apple Tuesday afternoon said it posted a net profit of $32 million for its just-completed third fiscal quarter, down from a net profit of $61 million in the same fiscal period of a year ago.
Apple recorded revenues of $1.43 billion for the quarter, down just a bit from $1.47 billion from the year-ago quarter. Gross margins were 27.4 percent, Apple said, down from the 29.4 percent it had in the year-ago quarter.
Apple said international sales accounted for 42 percent of its quarter?s revenues.
Apple shipped 808,000 Macs during the quarter, down 2 percent from the year-ago quarter and down 1 percent from the second quarter. [[from a Bloomberg News article on Apple:
The PC business has never been tougher. Dell Computer Corp. and Apple are among the few that are profitable. Hewlett-Packard’s PC unit lost $110 million before tax the last two quarters. International Business Machines Corp.’s PC division had a $153 million pre-tax loss last year. Gateway Inc. had $1.2 billion in losses over the past five quarters.
“Not losing a lot of money is, unfortunately, a shining achievement in today’s PC market,” Jobs said in an e-mail. ]]
From Apple’s financial conference call:
Apple said units sales were down about 100,000 units from the company’s initial expectations. Likewise, revenue was down about 11 percent from original expectations. Slowing sales of flat-panel iMacs, Power Macs, and PowerBooks accounted for 80 percent of the revenue shortfall. Apple said it was particularly disappointed with sales of Power Macs and believes businesses are deferring purchases because of economic conditions. Customers are also deferring purchases until Jaguar (the code name for the next version of Mac OS X) and QuarkXPress for Mac OS X ship.
Apple said it sold 220,000 flat-panel iMacs in its second quarter. Although Apple expected strong sales to continue through the third quarter, demand slowed in May and June.
Xserve sales were also below expectations.
In part because of the uncertainty surrounding PC manufacturers Gateway, Compaq, and HP, Apple believes it Switchers campaign is resonating with Windows users, although it has no hard data yet, and is “putting all its wood behind that arrow,” it said.
Apple said tomorrow’s keynote address will include a 30-minute presentation on the Apple Stores.
