Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) reported quarterly earnings and revenue on Tuesday that beat expectations, but sold fewer iPhones than expected.
Shares were set to explode at Wednesday`s open, as investors digested the company's better-than-expected outlook for the current quarter, and a hefty capital return program.
The soft iPhone sales were still up from a year ago, and Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement that customers "chose iPhone X more than any other iPhone each week in the March quarter."
Earnings per share came in at $2.73 vs. $2.67, adjusted, expected by a Thomson Reuters consensus estimate. Revenue hiked to $61.1 billion vs. the expected $60.82 billion.
iPhone unit sales: 52.2 million vs. 52.54 million expected by experts.
Fiscal Q3 revenue guidance ranged from $51.5 billion to $53.5 billion compared to the expected $51.61 billion. Net income was $13.82 billion, up from $11.03 billion a year ago. A year ago, Apple earned $2.10 a share on revenue of $52.9 billion.
While Apple's iPhone shares were slightly softer than expected, the company managed to make more money than forecast with its services business, and offered Wall Street a generous $100-billion capital return program.
The after-hours stock rally showed Wall Street's relief, after a gloom-and-doom outlook going into the earnings report. Apple has often faced low expectations and managed to surpass them — Apple's EPS results have now beaten consensus 20 of the past 21 quarters.
Shares gained $4.91, or 2.9%, to $174.01 Wednesday morning.
