Apple posts $63 million profit; revenue up 36%
January 14, 2004 - 16:32 PST   Apple on Wednesday posted a net profit of US$63 million, or 17 cents a share, for its fiscal 2004 first quarter ended December 27, 2003. These results compare to a net loss of $8 million, or 2 per share, in the year-ago quarter. Revenue for the quarter reached a four-year high of $2.006 billion, up 36 percent from the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 26.7 percent, down from 27.6 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 44 percent of the quarter's revenue. Apple said it shipped 829 thousand Macs during the quarter, up 12 percent from the year-ago quarter, as well as 733 thousand iPods, up 235 percent from the year-ago quarter.

"It was an outstanding quarter for Apple, with double-digit unit and revenue growth and over 730,000 iPods sold," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We're kicking off 2004 with strong momentum, especially for Mac OS X, which is now used by almost 40 percent of our installed base, iPod and the iTunes Music Store, which has a 70 percent share of the legal music download market."

"We are very pleased to have exceeded our revenue and profit targets for the first quarter," said Fred Anderson, Apple's CFO. "Continued strong asset management enabled us to increase cash by $225 million to just under $4.8 billion. Looking ahead to the second quarter of fiscal 2004, we expect our third consecutive quarter of year-over-year double-digit growth in both revenue and earnings, with revenue of about $1.8 billion and earnings per diluted share of $.08 to $.10."

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