15 interesting points from today’s earnings call

Apple Store Front logo San Francisco

Apple announced its financial results for Q4 2014 this afternoon, and for the most part it beat the Street’s expectations. The company sold 39.3 million iPhones and pulled in $42.1 billion in revenue during the three month period, and iPad sales fell short at just 12.3 million.

We’re just finishing up the conference call, where Tim Cook, CFO Luca Maestri and other members of the executive team have discussed Apple’s performance, and offered some insight into its future. As usual, we’ve rounded up the to 15 most interesting points for you below.

  • Apple made 20 acquisitions in 2014, 7 alone in September quarter
  • Q4 saw the strongest revenue growth rate in seven quarters
  • All-time quarterly record for Mac sales, highest marketshare since before Windows 95
  • IDC: iPhone has 69% share of US commercial smartphone market
  • Baidu has deployed iPhone to 20,000 employees, has built 30 in-house apps
  • Apple still having trouble balancing supply and demand for new iPhones
  • iPad sales fell for third consecutive quarter
  • iTunes Store recorded all-time record billings in Q4, up 22% year over year
  • Total registered developers approaching 10 million, 22% growth
  • Retail stores generated $5.1 billion—a new record for the September quarter
  • Average revenue per store was $11.9M, with an average of 18,000 visitors per store per week
  • Apple opened 10 new stores in Q4, now has 437 stores
  • Apple now has $155.2 billion in cash and marketable securities, down $9.3 billion sequentially
  • Apple is going to change the way it reports earnings: iPhone, iPad, Mac and Services will be separate line items, and a new “other category” will include accessories (including Beats), peripherals, Apple TV, iPod and Apple Watch
  • Cook notes that he’s lumping Apple Watch into “other” category partly because he doesn’t want to share details with competitors

Again, it was overall a great quarter for Apple, and Wall Street agrees. Shares of APPL were up over 2% for the day, and climbed an additional 1.4% after hours. Additionally, with new iPhones and iPads headed into the holiday season, expect next quarter to be monstrous.