Topic: Growth Stocks

Wall Street Stock Forecaster Hotline – Friday, April 26, 2013

Article Excerpt

APPLE INC., $417.20, Nasdaq symbol AAPL, earned $9.5 billion, or $10.09 a share, in three months ended March 30, 2013. That’s down 17.9% from $11.6 billion, or $12.30 a share, a year earlier. Even so, the latest earnings beat the consensus estimate of $9.98 a share. Sales rose 11.3%, to $43.6 billion from $39.2 billion. That also beat the consensus estimate of $42.3 billion. The company sold 37.4 million iPhones, up 6.7% from a year earlier, and 19.5 million iPads, up 65.1%. It also sold 4.0 million Mac computers (down 1.6%) and 5.6 million iPods (down 26.6%). Apple recently launched a smaller, cheaper version of the iPad, called the iPad mini. It has also cut the selling price of older iPhones to help boost sales in developing markets. As a result, gross margin (gross profits as a percentage of sales) fell to 37.5% from 47.4%. The company also raised its quarterly dividend by 15.1%, to $3.05 a share from $2.65. The new annual…