As the Apple Turns: Scene 4442: We've Got Good News... (1/14/04)

We've Got Good News... (1/14/04)

Break out a bottle of your chosen celebratory beverage and get a-chuggin', folks, because Apple has done it again: according to the official press release, the company posted a profit of $63 million-- and even after subtracting $3 million due to an "after-tax investment gain," that means Apple earned a healthy chunk more than the $52-ish million Wall Street had been expecting. If nothing else, it sure beats that $8 million loss it ate in the same quarter a year ago.

Oh, but believe us, it gets better. Quit drooling over the profit for a sec and check out the revenues: Apple finally cleared that tricky $2 billion hurdle, with $60 million to spare. That's a four-year high, people, and a scorching 36% increase from a year ago. The bulk of the cash came from the sale of 829,000 Macs (up 12%), with a staggering 733,000 iPods (up 235%!) contributing nicely, too. The company would have sold even more iPods than that, but money dude Fred Anderson confirmed that Apple just couldn't keep up with the demand. Lack of stamina? No wonder Apple added the Wheaties guy to its board of directors. Balanced breakfasts for the whole staff!

Big Picture-wise, this was Apple's second quarter in a row hitting double-digit growth in both units and revenues-- and according to Fred, unless something nasty and unexpected happens (da da da DUMMMMMMM!), Q2 should turn out to be its third. Revenues won't hold above the $2 billion mark, since the holiday season had a lot to do with that, but Apple expects Q2 to bring revenue of "about $1.8 billion" and profit in the area of 8-10 cents per share, which comes out to roughly $28-35 million. Guess we'll find out in three more months.

Of course, none of this actually means squat to you, because the only reason you bothered to tune in was to see if you might have won a t-shirt in our quarterly Beat The Analysts contest. While we haven't compiled the detailed analysis yet (now there's a shock from which you'll never recover), we've futzed with the numbers enough to find our winner. For being the first entrant to guess Apple's $60 million profit on the nose and therefore being infinitely more accurate than the analyst consensus, faithful viewer Chad Hine gets to wear a smug grin of self-satisfaction and punch any Wall Street analysts he meets in the face. (Offer void where prohibited by law.) He also gets his choice of an AtAT shirt in the style and size of his choosing or a shrink-wrapped archaic software title from our world-renowned Baffling Vault of Antiquity™. Congratulations to Chad for his economic perspicacity, and congratulations to everyone at Apple for another stellar quarter.

And hey, while we're at it, what the heck: congratulations to us for being so gosh-darned great, and congratulations to all you AtAT viewers for having such terrific taste. Also, congratulations to Larry Ellison and his blushing bride Melanie Craft, and congratulations to Steve Jobs for landing the gig as photographer at Larry's wedding. Congratulations to faithful viewer Michael Fan for pointing that out to us. And congratulations to us, again, for letting this scene go completely off the rails and ending it totally off-topic.

By the way, about your choice of celebratory beverages... Clamato? Really?

SceneLink (4442)

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The above scene was taken from the 1/14/04 episode:

January 14, 2004: Do a little dance; Apple posts a $63 million profit, beating analyst estimates once again. Meanwhile, despite the good news, Apple's stock takes a pounding after the bell, and evidently in Germany you're allowed to return a computer if its components have been replaced with starchy edible tubers...

Other scenes from that episode:

4443: ...And We've Got Bad News (1/14/04) Ahhh, now that's more like it! If you've been tuning in regularly, you know that we've found it a wee bit unsettling that Apple's stock has been performing so well over the course of the past week; the price rose following the miniPod/GarageBand announcements (despite all those people who had been expecting an 80 GB iPod that fits completely inside the ear canal and costs $8.99), it rose again after the HP-branded iPod revelation, and kept right on rising in the wake of positive analyst sound bites and even a couple of upgrades...
4444: "I Swear It Came Like That" (1/14/04) You know, we fully planned to throw together a scene about how, as faithful viewer loa bacon pointed out, Hewlett-Packard overtook Dell to become the number one seller of Wintel systems last quarter...

Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast...


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