Apple Stuns Wall Street With Record First Quarter Earnings

Published on Tuesday, 24 January 2012 23:15 Written by J Hawk

New York, January 24^th (TradersHuddle.com) – Cupertino, California based Apple Corp. (NASDAQ: AAPL) posted record fiscal first quarter revenue of $46.33 billion for the 14 weeks that concluded on December 31^st of 2011.

The innovative computer and mobile media company’s Q1 2012 revenue results demonstrated a whopping increase of 44 percent from the $26.74 billion in revenue seen in its first quarter of 2011. 

The after hours NASDAQ market understandably responded very positively to Apple’s latest earnings news. Although the stock had closed the day at $420.41, it shot up as high as $468.95 after the announcement.  As of this writing, the stock had retraced some of its initial gains, and was trading up $33.53 or +7.98% on the day to the $453.94 per share level on after hours trading volume of 5.8 million shares.

iPhones and iPads Lead Growth in Apple Sales

Along with its earnings, Apple reported having sold 37.04 million iPhones in the most recent quarter, showing growth of 128 percent versus the same quarter last year. Also contributing substantially to its record breaking results, was the news that Apple sold 15.43 million iPads during Q1 2012, showing a 111 percent unit gain.

Less stellar sales results were seen for the Mac computers, where the company reported having sold 5.2 million units during the quarter, or a 26 percent unit increase versus Q1 2011. Perhaps the only disappointment was that Apple said it sold just 15.4 million iPods, showing a 21 percent unit drop from last year’s first quarter results.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said about the results that, “We’re thrilled with our outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs.” He went on to note that, “Apple’s momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline.”

Market Analysts’ Consensus Undershot Actual Apple Earnings by a Wide Margin

The very impressive earnings results, which Apple released earlier today just after U.S. stock markets had closed, improved on market analysts’ consensus expectations for its Q4 earnings by a wide margin.

Stock analysts had been enthusiastically marking up their Apple earnings estimates for weeks ahead of the latest announcement, but the magnitude of the excess was clearly beyond just about any outsider’s expectations.

For example, a survey of 36 market analysts by Zacks Investment Research showed a consensus of $10.07 for Apple’s Q4 earnings per share, with a high of $11.26 and a low of $8.88. The company’s actual, unaudited earnings of $13.87 per diluted share pretty much blew these estimates away.

The Technical Picture for Apple Remains Bullish

From a technical perspective, Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) share price has shown a regular long term upwards trend that has dominated trading since early 2009. After ranging throughout the first half of 2011, the stock began rising again overall, although volatility seemed to increase substantially.

Since reversing higher off of a medium term low at the $363.32 support level in late November of 2011, the trend in Apple’s share price has since been consistently higher, with today’s spike higher on very favorable earnings taking the stock to a new all time high at the $468.95 level.