Apple's record $83.4B Q4 misses Wall Street expectations
Apple earned $83.4 billion in revenue during its fourth fiscal quarter of 2021, missing Wall Street expectations but showing strong growth across its many product categories.
Credit: Andrew O'Hara, AppleInsider
The company published its Q4 2021 earnings on Thursday shortly before a call with investors. Apple's $83.4 billion in revenue represents year-over-year growth of 29% for the period ending in September, with this quarter's earnings per share calculated at $1.24.
Analysts were expecting Apple to report revenue of $85 billion and earnings-per-share of $1.23.
The company's gross margins have reached 42.2%, up from 38.2% in the fourth quarter of 2020.
Revenue from iPhone sales reached $38.9 billion in Q4, a hefty increase from the $26.4 billion it earned in 2020. The tech giant's iPad revenue has also risen 21% to $8.3 billion. Mac revenue was nearly flat, but managed to eke out an all-time record of $9.2 billion for the fourth quarter.
Services also touched all-time highs, hitting $8.8 billion in revenue, which represents 26% year-over-year growth. The Wearables, Home, and Accessories segment has risen 11% from the year prior, reaching $8.8 billion.
Full year sales hit $365.8 billion, up a massive 33% from 2020's $274.5 billion.
"This year we launched our most powerful products ever, from M1-powered Macs to an iPhone 13 lineup that is setting a new standard for performance and empowering our customers to create and connect in new ways," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO. "We are infusing our values into everything we make -- moving closer to our 2030 goal of being carbon neutral up and down our supply chain and across the lifecycle of our products, and ever advancing our mission to build a more equitable future."
Apple launched its iPhone 13 lineup during the September quarter, as well as new 10.2-inch iPad and iPad mini devices. Although those devices were debuted toward the end of Q4 2021, Apple's revenue appears to have benefitted from strong iPhone and hardware demand that didn't slow prior to the release of new models.
As has been the case since the pandemic, it is unknown if Apple beat its own expectations, since it didn't provide guidance for the fourth quarter. Guidance for the first quarter of 2022 is not expected, though Cook and CFO Luca Maestri will likely offer commentary on the coming period during today's earning conference call.
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Comments
AAPL is still very close to its 52 week high. NVDA, NFLX, and TSLA are all trading near their 52 week highs.
Apple is not doing itself any favors by withholding guidance.
what the fuck has this world come to.
… that's hindered global manufacturing
… during a global pandemic
… and hit global supply chains hard
… and during a shortage of silicon
… while pushing the frontiers of SoC design
… during a global pandemic
… while substantially switching the Mac product line
Apple has about 1,000,000,000 credit cards on file. If on average, everyone spends $1 per day, that's $1 billion per day or $365 billion per year. The formula has scaled for at least 10 years now.
I think that is code for…Wall Street was wrong!
Once again.
I realize these concepts are very difficult for many readers at tech news sites to grasp (and not just AI, MacRumors, Macworld).
And these expectations change over time. Do you remember Apple in 1997? I guarantee you that the Street did not expect 30% YoY growth from AAPL in the mid-Nineties.
2. The new MBP points to a direction where Apple is listening more to customer needs and where they can, implementing them. I still have an iPhone 11 and an AW3 because there is nothing really compelling to upgrade so what I have has to die or they introduce something that is revolutionary, not evolutionary, that I can’t not upgrade. The new MBP’s are revolutionary and I’ll get one for the sheer power they bring both on the CPU and GPU. I am not a pretend film maker or pro photographer who wants to use an iPhone 13 to make the next big hit or capture another sunset. I am not old and prone to falling so don’t need a new watch. While chip constraints may play into this I am not hearing that there are a lot of people who want an iPad or iPhone 13 and can’t get it. People want Apple to innovate and no doubt they will but outside of the MBP it has been kinda a big yawn.
Apple quarterly sales miss for first time since 2018 amid supply constraints
This is the headline from the MarketWatch website.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-sales-miss-for-first-time-since-2018-stock-falls-after-earnings-11635454056?mod=home-page
The article then goes on to report huge increases in sales of all products and services. Can’t these bozos keep their bullshit straight?
A lot of people thought that Apple would be much less impacted by the chip shortage and supply chain issues than everyone else because of Tim Cook's legendary experience in this area as well as Apple's ability to negotiate to be first in line. Seriously, I have seen comments on various blogs and sites bragging on this idea, but Apple indicated that they were impacted like everybody else, if not necessarily to the degree of everybody else.
Also, for anyone who was thinking that Apple - unlike everybody else - would be able to recover relatively quickly, Tim Cook stated that this was going to continue well into 2022: https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-fiscal-q4-revenue-misses-expectations-eps-in-line-citing-uncertain-macro-environment/
Really, what do you all want from the media and the markets on this anyway? It isn't their job to be Apple boosters and cheerleaders. If a company misses their projections, their stock is going to fall. For the folks who claimed "but Apple broke records and if the Wall Street predictions were off that was their mistake and Apple shouldn't take a hit for that" ... please add 2+2. The Wall Street folks PREDICTED that Apple would break records. Look, if the record is 5, the prediction was 10 and then yes, they predicted that Apple would set a record.
Guys, look. Intel met their projects and their stock dropped anyway. Why? Because - like Apple - Intel stated that they were impacted by the chip shortage and would be impacted for the foreseeable future. And because - like Apple - though Intel made a ton on some product lines (CPUs for servers and data centers like Apple on services) they made less than expected on others (PCs, like Apple made less than expected on the iPhone 13). In addition, while Intel met their projections and had YoY growth, AMD's growth was speculated to be much higher (which turned out to be true).
So no, the markets aren't being unfair to Apple and neither are the article writers. Good grief, the people on their site are acting like the commenters on blogs of sports teams who never win championships. Everything other than unadulterated praise and unconditional love gets treated as a slight. Every positive comment about a competitor is proof that the world is against you.