Apple CEO Tim Cook expects that the bottleneck in microprocessors will have a less serious impact on business in the future. The stock price rose after the market closed, but remained below the $3 trillion high the company reached earlier in the year.
Apple CEO Tim Cook at an online event September 14, 2021. Cupertino, California.
Apple released its December quarter results on Thursday, breaking its own records once again. Four out of five businesses had their highest quarterly sales, which also pushed profits to an all-time high.
In total, between early October and late December, Apple had sales of $124 billion and a profit of $34.6 billion. In terms of profit, this corresponds to an increase of slightly more than 20 percent compared to the same quarter of the previous year.
The successful course of business surprised some market observers and analysts, after all Apple employees were still warning in October 2021 that the company would be producing several million fewer iPhones than originally planned due to the global shortage of semiconductor chips and microprocessors.
According to CEO Tim Cook, the company felt the lack of computer chips in all divisions, but that’s why only the sales of the iPad collapsed. The other business segments, above all the iPhone, but also Mac computers, wearables and the service segment, grew compared to the previous year.
Opposite the Wall Street Journal said Tim Cook, he expects that the supply bottlenecks will weaken in the current quarter and that the business will be less burdened in the future.
Apple’s share price jumped more than five percent in after-hours trading to over $166, which was well below the company’s highest valuation to date at the beginning of the year. Back then, Apple was the first company in the world to briefly break through the $3 trillion valuation. Today, Apple has a market cap of around $2.6 trillion. This amount is still significantly higher than the combined market valuation of all companies listed on the Swiss stock exchange.
Apple is the second of the Big Five tech companies to beat analyst expectations for the December quarter. Microsoft announced strong growth on Tuesday. Google Group Alphabet, Facebook Group Meta and Amazon will publish their quarterly figures in the coming week.