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April 23rd, 2013 
Apple posted solid second-quarter results, but warned that business in the current quarter is far weaker than Wall Street analysts had been expecting.
(Credit: CNET)
The company said it expects revenue from the current quarter — Apple’s fiscal third — to come in between US$33.5 billion and US$35.5 billion. Even if Apple hits the high end of its forecast, that’s still more than US$3 billion shy of the US$38.6 billion expected by analysts polled by FactSet Research.
The company doesn’t provide explicit profit guidance, a figure that analysts calculate on their own.
Apple also said its gross margins — a key number, and one that has been shrinking in recent quarters — for the third-quarter came in between 36 per cent and 37 per cent, far lower than the 38.6 per cent that analysts had been looking for.
In the third quarter of 2012, Apple posted quarterly revenue of US$35.0 billion, and gross margin of 42.8 per cent. So even if Apple posts sales that are roughly flat with the same period a year ago, the margins are narrowing, which puts pressure on the business.
“We acknowledge that our growth rate has slowed and our margins have decreased from the exceptionally high level we experienced in 2012,” said CEO Tim Cook, talking on the company’s conference call with analysts.
When asked about the narrowing margins, CFO Peter Oppenheimer said that pressure is coming from lower revenue and a different product mix to lower-margin devices. In the March quarter, he said, margins were hurt as the company sold more “iPads than planned” and amped up production of the iPad Mini.
Via CNET.com
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