Apple Announces Largest-Ever $110 Billion Share Buyback As iPhone Sales Drop (cnbc.com) 39
Apple reported fiscal second-quarter earnings that topped estimates, despite a 10% drop in iPhone sales. The company also announced that its board had authorized $110 billion in share repurchases, "a 22% increase over last year's $90 billion authorization," notes CNBC. "It's the largest buyback in history, ahead of Apple's previous repurchases." From the report: Apple did not provide formal guidance, but Apple CEO Tim Cook told CNBC's Steve Kovach that overall sales would grow in the "low single digits" during the June quarter. Apple posted $81.8 billion in revenue during the year-ago June quarter and LSEG analysts were looking for a forecast of $83.23 billion. On an earnings call with analysts, Apple finance chief Luca Maestri said the company expected the current quarter will deliver double-digit year-over-year percentage growth in iPad sales. What's more, he said the Services division is forecast to continue growing at about the current high rate it's achieved during the past two quarters.
Apple reported net income of $23.64 billion, or $1.53 per share, down 2% from $24.16 billion, or $1.52 per share, in the year-earlier period. Cook told CNBC that sales in the fiscal second quarter suffered from a difficult comparison to the year-earlier period, when the company realized $5 billion in delayed iPhone 14 sales from Covid-based supply issues. "If you remove that $5 billion from last year's results, we would have grown this quarter on a year-over-year basis," Cook said. "And so that's how we look at it internally from how the company is performing."
Apple said iPhone sales fell nearly 10% to $45.96 billion, suggesting weak demand for the current generation of smartphones, which were released in September. The sales were in line with analyst estimates, and Cook said that without last year's increased sales, iPhone revenue would have been flat. Mac sales were up 4% to $7.45 billion, but they are still below the segment's high-water mark set in 2022. Cook said sales were driven by the company's new MacBook Air models which were released with an upgraded M3 chip in March. Other Products, which is how Apple reports sales of its Apple Watch and AirPods headphones, was down 10% year over year to $7.9 billion.
Apple reported net income of $23.64 billion, or $1.53 per share, down 2% from $24.16 billion, or $1.52 per share, in the year-earlier period. Cook told CNBC that sales in the fiscal second quarter suffered from a difficult comparison to the year-earlier period, when the company realized $5 billion in delayed iPhone 14 sales from Covid-based supply issues. "If you remove that $5 billion from last year's results, we would have grown this quarter on a year-over-year basis," Cook said. "And so that's how we look at it internally from how the company is performing."
Apple said iPhone sales fell nearly 10% to $45.96 billion, suggesting weak demand for the current generation of smartphones, which were released in September. The sales were in line with analyst estimates, and Cook said that without last year's increased sales, iPhone revenue would have been flat. Mac sales were up 4% to $7.45 billion, but they are still below the segment's high-water mark set in 2022. Cook said sales were driven by the company's new MacBook Air models which were released with an upgraded M3 chip in March. Other Products, which is how Apple reports sales of its Apple Watch and AirPods headphones, was down 10% year over year to $7.9 billion.
Buybacks signal there is nothing better you can... (Score:5, Interesting)
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They'd cut it to the Chinese first. [archive.is]
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Re:Buybacks signal there is nothing better you can (Score:5, Insightful)
They could spend the money on support. I deal with their enterprise people all the time and Apple's every policy is literally to put the onus for any and all work on you and only you.
They admit fault only when absolutely backed in to a corner and even then frequently with gaslighting saying shit has always been that way what do you mean.
They do not talk to themselves at all. All departments are siloed from each other and they want it to be your job to bounce around between them. I have had employees call me from their personal phones to talk off the record about how bad it is internally this way and so major systemic issues go unaddressed.
Overall, Apple are some of the tightest stingiest asshats I've ever dealt with in my entire life, wasting months of back and forth and hours and hours on the phone and emails because they refuse to replace a single device out of many thousands (the issue being the result once again of their Brazil levels of internal bureaucracy). I have never given Apple a penny personally and I hope to keep it that way.
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Another perspective, not corporate, is that I reported to them an unintuitive behaviour trap in their app store, and their support people agreed, and it was fixed a year later. And another anecdote, a Store employee suggested to me that I cite my EU rights, and therefore they'd have to fix my thing.
I'm not saying corporations aren't inherently inhuman, dehumanising machines, where the systems and silos become anti-pattens, just that to some extent maybe they're not the worst.
Re: Buybacks signal there is nothing better you ca (Score:2)
They're probably not as bad as HP, but if you have to resort to praise like that then they are terrible.
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HP never invented a round mouse.
A fantastically expensive cube floating on perspex.
A slippery "which way up is it" remote for their TV appliance.
Keys so flat they're worse than typing on glass.
RAM so expensive you'd think you were in a fancy restaurant whose only profits came from side dishes and the wine list.
The dysfunctional disaster that was MobileMe.
And, why... yes, I am an Apple fan.
Re:Buybacks signal there is nothing better you can (Score:5, Interesting)
Meanwhile, wages for virtually everyone else continue to either barely stay ahead of inflation (the upper 50%) or are outright below it (the lower 50%). The federal minimum wage, which hasn't been increased in 15 years - the longest such delay ever - is now down to being worth $5/hr, inflation-adjusted. Our decaying infrastructure is held together with hope and duct tape. The US is the only "developed" country in the world in which the idea of "medical bankruptcy" exists. Our tax brackets haven't been adjusted for inflation in decades (that $250K top bracket set in FDR's time should be between $2.5M and $4M now). Our federal debt is spiraling, and the most incredible part is that the people who have blown up the government's books every single time they've gotten the chance, for over forty years now, may actually get another chance to do so after november.
Tax. The. Rich.
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Amen!
Absolutely nothing wrong with a company giving profits to the people who own the company, by way of increasing shareholder value.
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"**NOBODY** buys stock because they want to throw away money."
Have you heard about tax harvesting?
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Yes, and therefore it is nominally better for a company to do a buyback instead of spending the money on bullshit like "aggressive fight for market share".
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Buybacks signal there is nothing better you can think of doing with all your cash.
Or that you have a lot of cash and other assets and a market mob madness has depressed your stock price to where it's a really good deal to spend some of the cash to take some of the stock out of circulation and concentrate the company's value in the rest of it.
Possibly it's even such a good deal that some rich outsiders could buy up controlling interest, sell off the non-money assets, take that and the cash pile, and come ou
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Buybacks signal there is nothing better you can think of doing with all your cash.
Sort of. Buybacks are a short-term decision made by short-term executives. They are indeed the best action in the short-term to increase executive compensation. I don't say that as a pejorative. Executives (and all employees) should be motivated by individual compensation, but how that compensation is structured leads to different decisions. There might be capital and R&D investments that might pan out in the mid to long term, but the current executives will likely not be around to benefit from tho
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Everything else is super mature and VERY polished.
Siri says "Hi - here's what I found on the web about "Vera Polish".
corporate greed (Score:1)
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Apple spends huge amounts of money on R&D.
Spending more doesn't necessarily produce more benefit. At some point, it just becomes wasteful.
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Apple spends huge amounts of money on R&D.
Spending more doesn't necessarily produce more benefit. At some point, it just becomes wasteful.
Spending more on R&D by doing exactly the same R&D is not useful. Apple does a lot of useful R&D, but they obviously don't do everything. There are many areas that Apple could have invested in and have fallen behind in. Siri, maps, AI are just a few.
Perhaps the big question is whether Apple has resigned itself to being a large slow or slower-growth company that relies on dividends and buybacks rather than innovative disruption (possibly because they have decided that there is nothing substant
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Apple got to where it is now with the iPhone. Full stop. It was not a fluke, nor did it come out of the blue since the iPhone could not have happened without the Newton before it, because that was the motivation for Apple's investment in ARM.
As such, Apple should be continually casting a wide net to find the next thing. That means knowing that you will throw a certain amount of R&D money into the void and hoping that it will work out for you one day because you own the IP. This is, once again, a necessa
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iPhone sales slowing (Score:1)
Re: iPhone sales slowing (Score:1)
Consumers have gone broke and you don't get an Apple Obamaphone.
Largest ever $110 billion share buyback? (Score:2, Interesting)
So this one is bigger than all the other $110 billion share buybacks that have happened???
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"Apple is actually breaking its own previous record. Back in 2018, Apple initiated a share buyback for $100 billionâ"a record that held until now.
But between then and now, Apple also initiated five other share buybacks: $75 billion in 2019, $50 billion in 2020, $90 billion in 2021, $90 billion in 2022, and $90 billion in 2023."
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Clearly you missed the sarcasm. The phrase "largest ever $110 billion share buyback" implies that there were other $110 billion share buybacks that were smaller. I was just poking fun at the wording.
During hard economic times (Score:3)
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My trouble is that my employer REQUIRES me to have either an Android or iPhone at the latest OS level (so no old phones) so they can put the 3 various 2-factor authentication apps they require on it. Flip phones are not allowed. Mind you, the refuse to help pay for it, but it is a job requirement INCLUDING power to wipe your phone whenever they want to. Want to work? Get a new smart phone and give us control of it. Otherwise, take a walk. Their reasoning is "At Will Employment"
Fuck Apple (Score:1)
Bad news is good news!
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Apple's part of our GDP is 263 billion annually. Like them or not, that's good for America.
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Apple's part of our GDP is 263 billion annually. Like them or not, that's good for America.
It's good mostly for the owning class, though, since trickle down doesn't. Remember, the money is spent five times or so if it's handed to the poor, or only a couple of times if it's handed to the wealthy, before it sits around like a turd and stops employing anyone because it's no longer being spent.
Siri (Score:2)
Siri of 2024 has virtually the same capability as Siri released in 2011.The dot projector isn't improved in resolution. The iPhone isn't worth the cost. They keep increasing the price of the iPhone, for what reason? They aren't doing much feature-wise. I get it, the product is "mature" (it isn't) .. but if they're too dumb to figure out new features or dramatically improve the existing features then they need to innovate on price. Start cutting the price dramatically. The iPhone 16 should just be the iPhone
IOS and Android (Score:1)
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Heck, just open the Watch enough to let it work with an iPad...
Re: IOS and Android (Score:2)
Dual boot a phone? That sounds absolutely niche and not worth their time of day.
About falling iPhone sales (Score:2)
https://fortune.com/2023/05/04... [fortune.com]
From a supply perspective, the second quarter was an opportunity for the iPhone 14 to rebound. The device had suffered from constraints during the previous period due to Covid policies in China.
And if we simply compare combined numbers from the last quarter to the year before (IDC): 50.1+80.5 million this half-year vs. 55.4+72.1 million same period last year, sales clearly grew by 2.4%.