Apple beat Wall Street sales and profit expectations on Thursday for its fiscal fourth quarter, bolstered by strong early sales of iPhone 16, and forecast revenue growth of low to mid single digits for the current period.
“We expect our December quarter, total company revenue to grow low to mid single digits year over year,” CFO Luca Maestri said on a call with analysts. Analysts had expected revenue growth of 6.65 percent to $127.53 billion during the first quarter, according to LSEG data.
Shares dropped about 2 percent in extended trading. Apple said sales were $94.93 billion, ahead of Wall Street targets of $94.58 billion, according to LSEG. Earnings of $1.64 per share, excluding a massive one-time tax charge in the European Union, topped analyst expectations of $1.60 per share. Sales during the fourth quarter of Apple’s iPhone, the company’s main product, were up 5.5 percent to $46.22 billion, compared with analyst estimates of $45.47 billion. Other product lines missed expectations and the China sales total was less than Wall Street expected.
Apple’s fourth quarter ended Sept. 28, meaning it reflects only a few days of sales of its iPhone 16 series that went on sale Sept. 20. Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook told Reuters that iPhone 16 sales grew faster than iPhone 15 sales did a year earlier, with both phones on sale for the same number of days in the fourth quarter.
Cook also said Apple customers are downloading a new version of its iPhone operating system with what it calls Apple Intelligence features at twice the rate they had the year before.
“We’ve had great feedback from customers and developers already,” Cook said. “We’re off to a good start.”
Tom Forte, an analyst at Maxim Group, attributed Apple’s slight share drop to China sales coming in below expectations.
“We see the potential for sustained weakness in China as we await additional details on the earnings call regarding the potential timing of Apple Intelligence in that important country,” Forte said.
Apple’s call with analysts began at 5 p.m. ET (2100 GMT).
The rollout of Apple’s artificial-intelligence strategy, which it revealed this year, hinges on how well its new phones sell.
Rather than introduce AI in a standalone app or service, Apple has sprinkled Apple Intelligence throughout its most recent operating systems as new features, such as the ability to help re-write an email in a more professional tone. Those features will mostly be available on iPhone 16 models, which feature more powerful computing chips, although the pro versions of the iPhone 15 both work with Apple Intelligence. While some of those Apple Intelligence features arrived this week, others have been delayed, which has led some Wall Street analysts to wonder whether consumers will be slower to upgrade their devices this year while flagship software features trickle out.
The early iPhone 16 results on Thursday could allay some of those concerns. IPhone sales helped steady Apple’s fourth-quarter sales in China, which were down less than 1 percent to $15.03 billion overall. Analysts were expecting China sales of $15.78 billion on average, according to data from Visible Alpha.
Apple’s rivals Microsoft and Meta both said this week they expect continued increases in spending to support their AI strategies. Apple said payments for property and equipment — a measure of its capital expenditures — were up $2.91 billion from the previous quarter to $9.45 billion.
Apple’s lower spending comes in part because it uses third-party data centers for some AI work. Some aspects of Apple Intelligence do rely on Apple’s own data centers, but the company is using its own in-house chips to power those features.
“There would be some (financial) benefit to us by using our own silicon, obviously, but that’s not the reason we’re doing it. We’re doing it because we can provide the same standard of privacy and security that we can provide on device,” Cook said.
Sales in Apple’s services business, which includes iCloud storage and Apple Music, were $24.97 billion, compared with analyst expectations of $25.28 billion, according to LSEG. Mac and iPad sales were $7.74 billion and $6.95 billion, respectively, compared to estimates of $7.82 billion and $7.09 billion, according to LSEG data.
Sales in Apple’s home and wearables business, which includes its Apple Watch and AirPods devices, fell to $9.04 billion, compared with estimates of $9.2 billion, according to LSEG.
Earnings per share were 97 cents including the charge related to a one-time multi-billion-euro European tax payment.
Apple results top Wall Street targets on strong iPhone sales, shares drop on outlook
https://arab.news/zw85s
Apple results top Wall Street targets on strong iPhone sales, shares drop on outlook
- Early iPhone 16 sales grew faster than iPhone 15 sales, says CEO Tim Cook
- Apple’s AI strategy includes new iPhone 16 features
These shy, scaly anteaters are the most trafficked mammals in the world
CAPE TOWN, South Africa: They are hunted for their unique scales, and the demand makes them the most trafficked mammal in the world.
Wildlife conservationists are again raising the plight of pangolins, the shy, scaly anteaters found in parts of Africa and Asia, on World Pangolin Day on Saturday.
Pangolins or pangolin products outstrip any other mammal when it comes to wildlife smuggling, with more than half a million pangolins seized in anti-trafficking operations between 2016 and 2024, according to a report last year by CITES, the global authority on the trading of endangered plant and animal species.
The World Wildlife Fund estimates that over a million pangolins were taken from the wild over the last decade, including those that were never intercepted.
Pangolins meat is a delicacy in places, but the driving force behind the illegal trade is their scales, which are made of keratin, the protein also found in human hair and fingernails. The scales are in high demand in China and other parts of Asia due to the unproven belief that they cure a range of ailments when made into traditional medicine.
There are eight pangolin species, four in Africa and four in Asia. All of them face a high, very high or extremely high risk of extinction.
While they’re sometimes known as scaly anteaters, pangolins are not related in any way to anteaters or armadillos.
They are unique in that they are the only mammals covered completely in keratin scales, which overlap and have sharp edges. They are the perfect defense mechanism, allowing a pangolin to roll up into an armored ball that even lions struggle to get to grip with, leaving the nocturnal ant and termite eaters with few natural predators.
But they have no real defense against human hunters. And in conservation terms, they don’t resonate in the way that elephants, rhinos or tigers do despite their fascinating intricacies — like their sticky insect-nabbing tongues being almost as long as their bodies.
While some reports indicate a downward trend in pangolin trafficking since the COVID-19 pandemic, they are still being poached at an alarming rate across parts of Africa, according to conservationists.
Nigeria is one of the global hot spots. There, Dr. Mark Ofua, a wildlife veterinarian and the West Africa representative for the Wild Africa conservation group, has rescued pangolins for more than a decade, which started with him scouring bushmeat markets for animals he could buy and save. He runs an animal rescue center and a pangolin orphanage in Lagos.
His mission is to raise awareness of pangolins in Nigeria through a wildlife show for kids and a tactic of convincing entertainers, musicians and other celebrities with millions of social media followers to be involved in conservation campaigns — or just be seen with a pangolin.
Nigeria is home to three of the four African pangolin species, but they are not well known among the country’s 240 million people.
Ofua’s drive for pangolin publicity stems from an encounter with a group of well-dressed young men while he was once transporting pangolins he had rescued in a cage. The men pointed at them and asked him what they were, Ofua said.
“Oh, those are baby dragons,” he joked. But it got him thinking.
“There is a dark side to that admission,” Ofua said. “If people do not even know what a pangolin looks like, how do you protect them?”
