Apple Reports $19 Million Profit for Q3

pinqkandi writes "Apple released it's quarter three results today, which revealed a $19 million net profit ($0.05/diluted shared). Revenue reached $1.545 billion as 771,000 Macs were shipped. CEO Steve Jobs called it 'a great new product quarter', citing the new generation of iPods, iTunes Music Store, and the PowerMac G5."

Comments

Profit for 1 reason

[BigBir3d]

$4billion cash reserve that makes nice interest as it sits in the bank.

Re:Profit for 1 reason

[GlassHeart]

Your point is valid, but Apple is one of only a few companies doing anything interesting in this field right now. Within the past year or so, they have release several new software products (Safari, Keynote, Final Cut Express, and most recently Soundtrack), a new line of desktops featuring a new CPU, and at the same time updating just about every existing software title except maybe Appleworks, and every hardware product that I can remember. On top of that, they built an on-line music store.

Each of these take significant investments. The G5 line has not made a single dollar of profit yet, but must have consumed a lot of NRE dollars. This is precisely the stage where companies lose money developing new products, so Apple is just lucky that they have huge reserves to still turn a small profit.

All in all, your observation is rather cynical. It's almost as if you're suggesting that Apple would be a better company if they just laid everybody off, and turn a nearly guaranteed profit each quarter from bank interest.

Re:Dirty MP3 pirates paying for music????

[Alan Partridge]

Here's a little revision for us capitalists:-

1) Listen to customers.
2) Sell them what they want.
3) Profit.

See the difference?

Re:It has been a good year.

[Dr Reducto]

Yeah, that is a good point. Apple comes out with something uber-cool, and the PC world just sits back and says: "We just increased our processor speed by .5 gHz" or "The New version of Windows will be out in 6 months". Apple works on getting things done that haven't been done before, or done at all, consequences be damned.

OS X and Apple Stores are working...

[metamatic]

From Investor's Business Daily:

Apple's share of U.S. consumer PC unit sales rose to 3.4% in the first quarter, up from 1.9% two years earlier. Its share of dollars spent on consumer PCs rose from 2.3% to 5.2%.

Things are brighter in the U.S. consumer notebook PC segment. Apple's unit market share rose from 0.3% to 6.8% in the two years. And its share of the market based on dollars spent rose from 0.2% to 8%.

This says to me that xServe isn't managing to push the Mac into the business server market, but OS X and nifty hardware have lead to a major jump in consumer sales.

Re:I love apple, but...

[overunderunderdone]

Why? Because profit is money wasted. Better to invest your capital than give it away to shareholders.

A little confusion over who's money it is? The investors quite literaly own the company and it is their money, their company and it is (supposed to be & is legally obligated to be) run for their benefit. Actually, stictly speaking they ARE the company - a collective body of individuals (the shareholders) that in a limited way can legally act as though they were a single individual (to do things like hire you to make them more money). They are usually more than happy letting you reinvest their profits if it will lead to a bigger, healthier, MORE PROFITABLE company in the future but that is a very different thing froms saying profit is "money wasted" and that it is better to inveset than "give it away to shareholders".

Music is Apple's Future

[jamesmrankinjr]

Apple's growth prospects are all wrapped up in Music.

• iPod sales way up, especially with Windows version.
• 6.5MM songs sold WITHOUT a Windows version. Huge growth potential here, and scales nicely (marginal cost of selling a song is roughly 0, compared to computers which have large fixed costs).
• iTunes Music Store for Windows should create even more iPod sales, completing the virtuous circle.

So outlook for growth in Apple profits is tied strongly to its music business, much more so than computer sales.

Best,
-jimbo