Apple quarterly profit rises on Mac strength

San Francisco, July 26: Apple Inc. posted a higher quarterly profit that zoomed past expectations on strong Macintosh sales and said it expected to sell one million iPhones by the end of the current quarter.

It also reported a surprising rise in its profit margin from the previous quarter on Wednesday because of less expensive components and strong direct sales.

Shares of Apple, up 62 percent since the start of the year when Chief Executive Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone, rose 6.5 after the report.

''Apple destroyed numbers for this quarter. Its Mac numbers were very strong and above expectations,'' said Shannon Cross, an analyst at Cross Research.

''Their gross margin at 37 percent was extremely strong and bodes well for HP and Dell from a commodity-price perspective.'' Apple's net income for its fiscal third quarter ended June 30 was 8 million, or 92 cents per share, compared with 2 million, or 54 cents per share, a year earlier. Revenue was .41 billion, up 24 percent from .37 billion a year earlier.

Apple had been expected to earn 4.4 million, or 72 cents per share, on revenue of .29 billion, according to the average analyst forecast on Reuters Estimates.

Gross profit margin was 36.9 percent, up from the 35.1 percent the company achieved in the previous quarter, a show of strength that the company had not predicted.

Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer told Reuters that component prices and strong direct sales by Apple helped drive the increase in profit margin.

Apple also estimated earnings of about 65 cents per share on revenue of about .7 billion for its fiscal fourth quarter.

Apple said it shipped 1.76 million Macintosh computers in the quarter, a rise of 33 percent from a year earlier.

Shipments of iPods were 9.82 million, up 21 percent from the same period a year earlier.

The iPhone went on sale on June 29 but its impact on Apple's results was limited because it was available only in the last two days of the quarter and sales will be booked as subscription revenue over two years.

It sold 270,000 iPhones in the two days.

Sam Rahman, portfolio manager at Baring Asset Management in Boston, said the forecast for 1 million iPhone sales by the end of the first full quarter of sales was ''a very big number'' and predicted shares would move higher.

Apple shares rose 6.5 percent to 6.13 in after-hours trade from a close of 7.26 on Nasdaq.

Jobs at the beginning of the year set a goal of selling 10 million units in 2008, helping to fuel the stock run-up this year.

Oppenheimer reiterated that goal in an analyst call on Wednesday.

The shares trade at 30 times its expected 2009 profit, a level most analysts say represents a rich valuation.

Reuters>