Ouch-- Apple posted its Q4 '02 earnings yesterday, and apparently CFO Fred Anderson had to reach for his red pen for a change. It seems the company managed to lose some $45 million over the course of the past three months, and since it's not under the cushions of the sofa in the lounge (they checked), apparently that cash is gone, gone, gone. If you want details, there are some available in Apple's official press release, and a lot more in MacNN's coverage of the afternoon conference call. In the words of the Immortal Ms. Feiss, it was kind of... a bummer.

Now, some of you might contend that Apple's loss of $45 million should prompt the use of terms slightly more dramatic than "ouch" and "bummer," but there are actually plenty of reasons why Apple's first quarterly loss in two years really isn't all that bad. First of all, we've done the math, and considering that Apple has $4.33 billion sitting in its savings account, relatively speaking, losing $45 mil is roughly equivalent to one of the AtAT staff accidentally dropping a couple of subway tokens behind the fridge while microwaving a burrito.

Secondly, money's money, sure, but every single penny of that $45 million (and then some) was due to "the write-down of certain equity investments"-- meaning that, like everyone else on the planet with a stock portfolio, Apple has been taking it in the shorts lately, and that's got nothing whatsoever to do with how the company runs its day-to-day business. In fact, strip out $49 million in investment losses and a net $3 million in various other one-time charges, and you'll find that Apple earned a honest-to-goshness recurring operating profit of $7 million, right in line with analysts' expectations.

And really, there is some good news to be found hiding behind the declining gross margins, sliding unit sales, and Uncle Steve's proclamation that "we do not expect our industry to pick up anytime soon." We got improved channel inventory management (down to four weeks from last quarter's six and a half); 54,000 Windows iPods planting the Switch seed in inpressionable young minds; and "outstanding" performance by the retail initiative-- coupled with the fact that, by the end of the year, 31% of the U.S. population will be living within 15 miles of at least one of Apple's fifty stores. The invasion continues.

So anyway, that's the "that." And this is the part where we'd normally announce the winner of our quarterly Beat The Analysts contest, but, well, we're kind of still running it. So if you haven't yet entered, be sure to register your best guess as to what Apple's quarterly results will be were, and you may just luck out and win an archival-quality AtAT t-shirt or the dusty software title of your choice exhumed from our infamous Baffling Vault of Antiquity™. (Try not to sprain a frontal lobe coming up with an answer.)