Wow, it seems like no matter how well Wall Street thinks Apple is doing, they always end up doing even better. Apple revealed their first quarter financial results today, and for the fifth consecutive quarter, they not only posted a profit, but they outperformed just about everyone's expectations. This time the number scrawled in black ink at the bottom of the page is a whopping $152 million, or 95 cents per diluted share. The industry consensus was expecting a profit of 70 cents per share. Once again, Apple beats the Street. Apple's got their own press release, and as usual, Apple's turnaround is big news, so you can read more about it just about anywhere-- like in this CNET article.

But as exciting as the profit is, the real news is that Apple's showing some real signs of growth again. For example, revenues are up-- $1.71 billion, compared to $1.6 billion in the same quarter last year. So whereas much of the profit from previous quarters came from cost-cutting, Apple's really starting to make some money by simply selling more computers. Plus, their margins improved a lot; they were a very respectable 28.2 percent, up significantly from 22.4 percent the year before. (We don't know how Apple kept the margins so high when selling a computer as low-priced as the iMac-- by our calculations, given the new gross margins, the iMac construction cost must be somewhere around $4.68.) Then there's inventory, which Apple seems to have completely under control these days; it's down to only two days' worth. We're anxiously awaiting Wall Street's reaction to all this good news-- the results were released after the close of the market, with Apple's stock price at $46.5. Will it break $50 by the end of the month, as Apple Recon has predicted?

As for the Beat the Analysts contest, as usual, AtAT viewers came closer to predicting Apple's financial results than the analysts did. After omitting "Steve Jobs"'s prediction of a $10⁴⁷ profit, the average of all entries was $139,990,913.91. That's pretty darn close, as things go. There was a tie for closest guess, however: John Teti, Jr. missed it by half a million on the low side with his guess of $151.5 million, and Keith Lim overshot by the same amount on the other side with his entry of $152.5 million. So we're willing to be magnanimous and declare them both winners. We'll be contacting John and Keith shortly to let them choose their nominal prizes from the Baffling Vault of Antiquity™. Thanks to everyone who entered, and start thinking about next quarter!