Apple profits surge 125% on record sales of 20.34M iPhones, 9.25M iPads

[onthebottom]

What was the price when Pekkkr advised me to sell?

LMAO

OTB

Apple profits surge 125% on record sales of 20.34M iPhones, 9.25M iPads

By AppleInsider Staff
Published: 04:35 PM EST

Apple said Tuesday that third-quarter profits rose nearly 125% percent to $7.31 billion, or $7.79 per diluted share, on record quarterly sales of $28.57 billion for the three-month period ended June 25, 2011.

These results compare to revenue of $15.70 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.25 billion, or $3.51 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 41.7 percent compared to 39.1 percent in the year-ago quarter and international sales accounted for 62 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Shares of Apple responded to the news by surging more than 7%, or $26.48, to a new all-time high of $403.33.

“We’re thrilled to deliver our best quarter ever, with revenue up 82 percent and profits up 125 percent,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Right now, we’re very focused and excited about bringing iOS 5 and iCloud to our users this fall.”

During the three-month period from April to June, the Cupertino-based electronics maker sold a record 20.34 million iPhones, representing 142% unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple also shipped record 9.25 million iPads during the quarter, a 183% unit increase over the year-ago quarter.

Sales of the company's Mac personal computers came in just shy of 4 million at 3.95 million, a 14 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Meanwhile, iPods continued their expected decline, falling 20 percent unit wise from the year-ago quarter to 7.54 million units.

“We are extremely pleased with our performance which drove quarterly cash flow from operations of $11.1 billion, an increase of 131 percent year-over-year,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the fourth fiscal quarter of 2011, we expect revenue of about $25 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $5.50.”

 

[rafterman]

Ha ha ha RIM is so completely fucked.

 

[onthebottom]

Interesting useless statistic:

Apple’s Cash Hoard Exceeds GDP of 126 Countries

by Bryan Chaffin | 8:00 AM, Jul. 21st, 2011

Apple has more than US$76.2 billion in cash as of the June quarter, and The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that this was more than the gross domestic product (GDP) of 128 countries, according to data from the World Bank that we verified. We thought that was a fun factoid, if rather a pointless comparison, and decided to put some graphs together to see what that data might look like.

 

[WoodPeckr]

You would think with that kind of money they might actually invest a little to get the iPhone, etc made in America, rather than China.

WTF!!!!
You want to put Americans to work???
Are you some kind of pinko/commie/socialist???
Pinko thinking like that violates our Corporatist Mantra of 'Greed Is Good', that peeps like bottie learnt in business school, along with his fuzzy math, FFS!!!

If you redistribute money away from the top 1-2% down to the peasants don't you realize how badly this will impact on CEO Bonus' and those of top Apple executives??? They may have to give up a few benefits they are entitled to!!!

Give your head a shake man.....what you propose is downright UnAmerican, goes against 'free trade' and all the great things Globalism has done to the USA!!!....

 

[onthebottom]

You would think with that kind of money they might actually invest a little to get the iPhone, etc made in America, rather than China.

I'm not sure I understand what one thing has to do with the other.... Cobster did post an interesting article showing that a lions share (pun intended given this weeks release) of the salaries stay in the US at Apple..... They did just lease space to employ another 1,300 people and have plans before the zoning board in Cupertino for a massive expansion there....

OTB

 

[WoodPeckr]

Beautifully put obfuscation bottie!....:eyebrows:

 

[AnimalMagnetism]

I'm not sure I understand what one thing has to do with the other.... Cobster did post an interesting article showing that a lions share (pun intended given this weeks release) of the salaries stay in the US at Apple..... They did just lease space to employ another 1,300 people and have plans before the zoning board in Cupertino for a massive expansion there....

OTB

Not too difficult considering the Apple US only employs corporate and R&D staff. that's where the money is. the many many thousands of outsourced workers average $100 per month

 

[TeasePlease]

Why not think globally instead of domestically? Invest in manufacturing in China; invest in research and development in North America. Economic power liesin innovation and exploitation of ideas. Manufacturing is a commodity. Use Chinese labour, pay them a lower (but locally fair) wage. Create the middle class in China and market our products there. Everyone wins. No one needs buggy whips anymore.

 

[AnimalMagnetism]

I guess someone should tell Intel they are doing it wrong. The vast majority of their products are manufactured in the USA.
In Feb 2011 they announced construction of a new manufacturing plant in Arizona at a cost of 5 billion dollars which will produce new 14nm chips and be ready for production in 2013
http://newsroom.intel.com/community...han-5-billion-to-build-new-factory-in-arizona

and oh yea, they just posted record earnings yet again!

 

[Powershot]

Intel chips are manufactured by machines in sealed environments, they don't have anywhere near the manual final assembly that phones, tablets, notebooks etc have. Nothing like what Apple, HTC, Samsung etc do.

How about all electronics companies do their R&D, manufacturing, and assembly in North America if they want to sell their products here and compete with North American companies...

 

[AnimalMagnetism]

Intel chips are manufactured by machines in sealed environments, they don't have anywhere near the manual final assembly that phones, tablets, notebooks etc have. Nothing like what Apple, HTC, Samsung etc do.

How about all electronics companies do their R&D, manufacturing, and assembly in North America if they want to sell their products here and compete with North American companies...

Rim manufacture a lot of their products in North America. checking a large number of blackberries you will see a "Made in Canada" sticker on it. Although they also manufacture in Mexico and Hungary

 

[JohnLarue]

You would think with that kind of money they might actually invest a little to get the iPhone, etc made in America, rather than China.

They have an obligation to their shareholders to run the business in an efficent, competitive manner
They do not have an obligation to create jobs in one country relative to another.

Since they are selling world wide and recieving revenue in various curencies , it makes sense to manufacture in different countries.
Since China represents Apples biggest avenue for sales growth, it is logic to manufacute there and reduce curency risk.

Why America?
Why not Mexico, Canada, Sweden, North Africa or Russia, they have customers in those places as well ?

The size of the balance sheet is not the reason to make social business decisions
It was not that far in the past when the future of Apple was in question.

Finally rather than trying to dicate to management where to make the product, the shareholders should request the excess cash be returned to them in the form of dividends

 

[WoodPeckr]

Your response indicates, in a small way, why the "new right" is killing America.

It's crazy.

This IS the position of the 'new right'

They have an obligation to their shareholders to run the business in an efficent, competitive manner....

Finally rather than trying to dicate to management where to make the product, the shareholders should request the excess cash be returned to them in the form of dividends

Workers don't matter anymore. Only the Fat cats and shareholders matter. Workers should be happy flippin' burgers or stocking shelves at Wall Mart with cheap commie crap!

Welcome to plutocratic Globalism where being a serf is good!.....

 

[onthebottom]

This shows a pretty profound ignorance of the global economy:

Your response indicates, in a small way, why the "new right" is killing America.

This has nothing to do with right or left in politics (remind me again who signed the NAFTA deal?) - this is a global economic reality.

It would cost very little of that cash horde for Apple to build or support suppliers in America to actually MAKE the products they design in the US, let alone do so vertically themselves.

Apple is going to be in the business of making things for quite some time - would it not make sense to invest in a manufacturing capability that eliminates the need to have all of their best products made by Chinese manufacturers integrating Japanese and other Asian components.

It probably cuts some basis points of margin short-term, but investing in everyday jobs that continue to pound out interesting "made in the USA" products will, in the long run, protect Apple a lot more than teaching everyone in Asia how to make cool stuff that one day they will just end up duplicating for THEIR home markets.

I think your ignoring the reality of a global supply chain, if you follow Apple at all you'll know that they are constantly re-sourcing their components based on cost/ability of manufacturer/innovation - all of these vendors (all of them) are in Asia. Asia is the global center for electronics manufacturing, this has very little to do with Apple they are simply conforming to the global reality.

The US is where Apple has built its consumer base, where it was protected from failure by a competitor in Microsoft in its hour of need, and where ultimately everything it launches has to succeed first.

Yes, the US is really the hub of innovation and that is the market that has to be won first - that is why almost the entire SW industry is in the US.... That said, innovation is a long way from hand assembly - ask Nike.

Is it so crazy to ask that people think beyond the next 90 days and invest in building or supporting state-of-the-art manufacturing across the US for products which find their feet there?

It is actually, in a global economy answering the question "where it's built" is a complex answer (where is a Toyota Camry built?).

Those of us in business who loathe the idea of the government grabbing more and more of what we earn shake our heads when the right says "business needs help" and then companies SIT on trillions in cash without making any long-term investments in the markets that keep them alive, instead shipping every job they can to markets which are only waiting to rip off their ideas in a few years anyway.

It's hard to make the case that big companies create jobs when they sit on cash that could go to creating them, albeit with a few years, rather than a few days time horizon.

It's crazy.

I don't think just the right says "business needs help", in fact the tea party (unwisely in my view) was very strongly against TARP (both for banks and GM) and the POTUS has tried on several occasions to take a victory lap for W's Tarp program.

Why would a rich economy want unskilled jobs that illiterate workers can do, I don't think that's a growth strategy for the US, or Canada for that matter.

OTB

 

[WoodPeckr]

This shows a pretty profound ignorance of the global economy:

This has nothing to do with right or left in politics (remind me again who signed the NAFTA deal?) - this is a global economic reality.

This shows YOUR utter ignorance by dismissing the immense damage your globalism has done to the US economy and the American Dream!

All you care about is the corporate bottom line....peoples lives and living standards being destroyed don't mean a hoot to you corporate apologists!

NAFTA was a brain fart spawned during the brainless Reagan Revulsion. GOPers who have always been owned by Big Business and corrupted by them, pushed for it back then. NAFTA didn't get passed till Big Business was able to sufficiently corrupt DEMS enough to get it passed, as they had done to GOPers.

This is the sick global economic reality, you apologize for, that is DRIVING the USA into Default!....

 

[onthebottom]

Your naivete would be charming if it wasn't symptomatic of exactly what is driving a great country, and indirectly the world, to ruin.

First, let's acquaint you with reality -

1) Most people that you call "unskilled" appear that way because there are millions of desperate people willing to do what they
can do for much less money.

Yes, they have few options and thus these jobs are a substantial improvement to the subsistence farming that would otherwise be their option - look at the improvement in poverty in China as a prime example. This is a MASSIVE human improvement even if spoiled white people who've never been anywhere don't realize it.

2) That is as true of every job on Wall Street, and every management job in the US, as it is of factory jobs.

Clearly that's not true on Wall Street or many professional careers. A major blunder in your logic.

3) The reason your job is protected, and you don't appear to be unskilled, it that protection of your jobs (and Wall Street, etc)
is referred to as "IMMIGRATION" policy, and for the manufacturing world, it's called "protectionism".

My job isn't protected at all, I have a global job and the person doing my job could live almost anywhere in the world - I'm proving that point living in OH in many ways.

To give you an example, there are millions of qualified bankers far less stupid than anyone on Wall Street who don't need
50% of the profits of a company to be paid in bonuses to create and process transactions. They would happily work for
a straight salary that corresponds to what a long-term executive assistant might make. And do a better job, on a temporary
work permit that could be revoked by the company if they didn't cut it. (Call that immigration reform).

No there are not, you obviously don't understand the financial system - those evil wall street jobs exist in almost every major economic center in the world - for example in London the AIG guy who put together the CDS business was being paid $1M a WEEK to unwind it.... I've meet bankers all over the world (in nearly every continent) and there is very little variation in their compensation globally.

The reason that the banking system hasn't captured those savings is that banks are protected monopolies, and immigration
(or true "free trade" in THAT kind of labour) is banned.

Not true at all, the largest banks are global organizations (Citi, JPMC, HSBC.....) and they move people around all the time. Many of the Sr. people I've meet in the large global banks have lived in multiple countries.

The same is true of your job - anyone with international experience knows all American managers are vastly overpaid vs
Asian counterparts, but the Asians can't trade their labour freely because of your protectionism of certain classes of people.
You just call it "immigration" policy, rather than what it is - selective protectionism.

Actually my manager in JAPac is the highest paid manager on my team, the Economist just published a report that said Brazil was the most expensive place in the world to hire a middle manager... you're flat wrong - but keeping your streak alive.

If "globalization" were taken to a consistent level, you and most of the employee class in America would be working for less
than $50k a year, which is about what the very brightest people who can't temporarily trade their labour would require to do what protected
US executives, accountants, lawyers, doctors, etc. get $500k a year or more to do by comparison.

I'm happy to report you're wrong, and I have to compete globally for my job... you're probably right for plumbers and electricians though...

Companies should be doing everything they can to reinvest massive profits, when they have them, in ensuring that
jobs which most people can do are present in the places where their most important customers are.

I think this is exactly what most firms do, those most important countries right now tend to be the BRICS

Nobody in your political system has the honestly to point out that the vast majority of people who are really doing well
without being true entrepreneurs are, in reality, the most protected classes in the economy, whose glaring inefficiency
we all subsidize without complaint.

Because they need jobs too, lol.

I don't think you've come very close to supporting that hypothesis, in fact I think you've done a good job of providing examples disproving it.

OTB

 

[JohnLarue]

This IS the position of the 'new right'



Workers don't matter anymore. Only the Fat cats and shareholders matter. Workers should be happy flippin' burgers or stocking shelves at Wall Mart with cheap commie crap!

Welcome to plutocratic Globalism where being a serf is good!.....

Unless your a shareholder, it is really none of your business where they choose to operate
a) If you are a shareholder, then go to the meeting and express your opinion
b) If you are not a shareholder .....Shut up

 

[onthebottom]

LOL, with every point refuted I can see why you "don't have the time" and instead went on to repeat your hypothesis in 12 paragraphs with multiple colors...

RE: OTB's response to my last post

Don't have time to go through everything, but let's just pick up on my central theme - that protectionism
is alive and well via elaborate disguises like "immigration policy", "securities law", "credential recognition"
and so on ... which are simply ways for some people to win via fake competition that penalizes only a few.

What bankers are paid -

Banking is a protected activity in every country in the world. The global financial sectors you cite are all internally protectionist,
and securities laws prevent the truly free flow of capital to an opportunity internationally without intermediaries who are all monopolistic
in pricing. Nobody can open up a bank with the advantages of the incumbents without absolutely punitive regulatory advantages
favouring the incumbents in most of the "global economic centres" you cite.

So talking about compensation parity in banking is laughable. Even then, Wall Street compensation for non-existent value add is
ludicrous by international standards that aren't standards.

You were talking about employment not opening a bank. The fact that banking is a global activity and that all substantial economies have large banking sectors refutes your point.... you can earn a globally competitive banking wage anywhere in the world and if you work for a global organization (Citi, HSBC, BBVA....) you can do that work in many different countries over the years.

RE: You "competing" for your job

If it was possible for the world to export people the way products are exported, then we'd both know if you were truly competitive.
If people could be "shipped" for temporary work positions (say 5 year terms, sent back if the company didn't need them), then there
would be a level playing field for your job.

There isn't, so your "competition" is as rigged as the banking system.

My job can be done anywhere there is decent telco and air service.... which is in much of the world... no need to relocate to Ohio to do my job (in fact, that I live in OH is proof to this point).

Have you heard of an H1B visa program?

Re: US Managers are overpaid and protected

Simple facts -

"US managers are over-priced compared to .... previous US managers, for one thing. American CEOs
are paid around TEN TIMES MORE than their predecessors in the 1960s, from a number of different measures, even
though the 1960s group delivered companies that created far more relative value than their modern counterparts."

That fact comes from a Cambridge University comparison done for some pension fund I forget ... Korean fellow,
nice piece you should read sometime.

"In absolute terms, depending on what measure we use and the country we compare, American managers are paid
up to TWENTY times more than competitors running similarly large and successful companies"

Same guy - I'll find the name, but there's numerous studies on this issue among shareholder rights activists.

The reason that managers are overpaid and workers outsourced - simple - protectionism. You can't import
executives due to immigration protectionism, but you can outsource jobs, and arbitraging the gap is why
the few protected classes are simultaneously in a job, and overpaid to boot.

If you look at only CEO pay you'll get skewed numbers as our CEOs run some of the largest organizations in the world and do so with very leveraged comp plans. I think the Brazilian example is more telling, in the growing economies there is less management talent but massive growth thus the managers are commanding incredible salaries. I'd say there is a middle management glut in the US, not a CEO glut (CEOs are like starting pitchers, you can't pay too much for a really good one). For the value of a CEO look at the demise of RIM (laying of 2,000 announced today), lack of vision, strategy and leadership is painful for all.

General Point

Immigration policy prevents "anyone" from competing for a skilled job in a market they can't enter, the same
as "banking" policy prevents capital from flowing without useless middle men to global opportunity. "Credentials"
policies for professionals do the same things - create fake, protectionist barriers to the number #1 export that
poor countries have - their people.

If you look at who has benefited economically from fake globalization of this kind, it's people who have no competition,
on the backs of fellow countrymen who do. That's unfair to the country, to shareholders, and to the world.

And why Apple executives who benefit from personal protectionism have a moral obligation (oh yeah, morality, never mind)
to create opportunities for workers in the country (the US) that protects opportunities for them, when it is obviously
economically feasible to do so ... hence my comment about developing a US-based manufacturing capability for perhaps
less than $1.0 billion of the $76 billion and setting a positive precedent for the other $4 trillion sitting around doing not
much to drag the economy forward in the US.

The funny thing is I think if you walked the halls at Apple you'd realize how wrong you are about talent from other parts of the world not having an opportunity to compete in the US. What you would see are a lot of offices and cubes with names on them you can't pronounce. While I would agree that there isn't a EU level free movement of labor, I would say that protectionist strategies of determining where a product is assembled to drive some moralistic valuing of one set of employees over another is very skewed.

Now, if you were complaining that teachers, plumbers and truck drivers don't have to compete for their jobs and that we should tear down the barriers that keep these professions a protected class..... then you'd be on to something.

OTB

 

[onthebottom]

Ah well, let's go through this shorter post as it's quicker.

Employment in a bank vs. Opening a Bank

The two go hand-in-hand. When you limit the ability to open a bank, you limit the operating models used
to run it. Which means that you largely have people cut from the same model, social strata, incumbent
institutions and so on in banking. You have a series of fat oligopolies protecting each other, the way
the telecom industry works in Canada, for example.

That is why banks throughout the US (and other places) have fought like hell to prevent Wal-Mart from opening
up a bank. There are many folks like Wal-Mart who absolutely COULD use a different operating model, and
find more than acceptable "talent" to staff that model, internationally, at wages that would drive Wall Street
into serious problems - first in consumer franchises, then for small/mid-size businesses, and even, if they gave
a crap, at the investment banking level.

If you had the ability of Wal-Mart type companies (who easily have the mass, and a totally different approach to
wages), you'd then see what banking jobs were really worth.

So I hope you can now understand the linkage between protecting inefficient incumbents and the inefficient people in
them.

Or do you seriously believe banks have fought at every level to deny Wal-Mart entry into the business because it would
keep wages, service levels, and strategy the same?

Now imagine you had a Wal-Mart type organization RUNNING a bank, and real immigration reform to allow talented
people to come in at whatever wage was acceptable to both company and employee. Then you'd see a fair comparison
to the collapse in wages unearned by "unskilled" labour - only now, banking would be "unskilled" labour.

Let's let you dwell on that one for a moment, and I'll get to your next point.

While I disagree with the bankers trying to keep Walmart from having a banking license (I do believe they have one btw) you're off base as to why the objection. It's all about payments and customer information, has nothing to do with cost structure - banks pay those you see in retail branches very similar wages to Walmart - it's a 70% turnover job with minimal skills (teller). Wall Street is a completely different animal and to some extent (as you've no doubt read on TERB) sparsely regulated in areas. You yourself could start a hedge fund in your basement if you'd like....

OTB

 

[onthebottom]

Again, a laughable comparison. If immigration reform allowed MILLIONS of people to come in and compete for "high wage" jobs,
on a 5 year rental basis, the way "low wage" jobs have been ruthlessly shelved offshore, then you'd have an example.

You're not seriously suggesting the limited numbers of "niche" professionals allowed under a H1B program is a comparison to what's
happened to the wholesale slaughter of manufacturing, are you?

Again, you seem to miss the basic observation that "labour", even of the executive kind, is a transportable commodity provided it
was ALLOWED to move - but at the executive and managerial ranks of major corporations, it is not. Which is the only reason so
many morons are allowed to run US public companies, with no penalty for failure ... and using RIM as an example is a joke, at
least the RIM guys CREATED their company before running it into the ground.

The vast majority of US CEOs are NOT founders, who, as far as I'm concerned, can do whatever the hell they want to the companies
they created from nothing, shareholders beware. The vast majority of US CEOs are hired guns with enormous compensation and compliant
boards with no real visibility into the business - to suggest otherwise is a joke ... leading to ridiculous overcompensation
the comparison demonstrating they are overpaid was made against international companies of LIKE SIZE.

And the facts on US managers apply just as much to US CEOs - as you well know, compensation trickles down at the uppermost levels -
you don't pay a CEO millions and then get the COO a hundred grand - the gap drags to the upper few levels of overpay. Which is why
the studies show what they do ... so don't let facts get in the way of an argument.

Sorry, wasn't aware of you providing any facts, just repeating the same point.

It's very easy to move from the London (or Bangkok) branch of Citi to NYC - happens all the time. Ever been at the HQ of a large multi-national - very diverse place. All countries control immigration, I think the US lets in more than any other country - plus the H1B visas (which are normally taken within days of the allotment). Industry constantly petitions Congress for an expanded H1B program.

Now tell me how those teachers, plumbers and truck drivers need to compete?

OTB