Apple posts world’s biggest quarterly profit
US technology giant Apple has broken records once again, this time posting the biggest every quarterly profit of any public company worldwide. The company posted quarterly revenue of $74.6 billion (€65.8 billion) and record quarterly net profit of $18 billion (€15.8 billion) for its fiscal 2015 first quarter ended December 27, 2014.
The results present a huge gain on Q4 2013 figures, which saw Apple post revenue of $57.6 billion (€51 billion) and net profit of $13.1 billion (€11.5 billion).
The results were fuelled by all-time record revenue from iPhone and Mac sales as well as record performance of the App Store. iPhone unit sales of 74.5 million also set a new record.
“We’d like to thank our customers for an incredible quarter, which saw demand for Apple products soar to an all-time high,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Our revenue grew 30% over last year to $74.6 billion (€65.8 billion), and the execution by our teams to achieve these results was simply phenomenal.”
“Our exceptional results produced EPS growth of 48% over (NJMCDirect for online payments)last year, and $33.7 billion (€29.7 billion) in operating cash flow during the quarter, an all-time record,” said Luca Maestri, Apple’s CFO. “We spent over $8 billion (€7 billion) on our capital return programme, bringing total returns to investors to almost $103 billion (€91 billion), over $57 billion (€50 billion) of which occurred in just the last 12 months.”
Apple announced it forecasts its fiscal 2015 second quarter revenue to be between $52 billion and $55 billion (€45.8 billion and €48.5 billion).