Apple's Q2 Earnings Slightly Exceed Analyst Expectations

From DailyTech: Apple managed to meet analyst expectations regarding its second quarter earnings report, and even plans to dole out additional cash to investors.

For Q2 2013 that ended March 30, Apple posted a net profit of $9.5 billion ($10.09 per diluted share). However, profit was down 18 percent compared to the same period last year; this was Apple's first year-over-year profut decline in nearly 10 years. Revenue came in at $43.6 billion, which was a boost from $39.2 billion in the year-ago quarter.

Analysts expected around $10.07 per share on revenue of $42.5 billion.

Second quarter sales were at 37.4 million iPhones, 19.5 million iPads and a little under 4 million Macs.

“We are very fortunate to be in a position to more than double the size of the capital return program we announced last year,” Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said in the statement. “We believe so strongly that repurchasing our shares represents an attractive use of our capital that we have dedicated the vast majority of the increase in our capital return program to share repurchases.”

Apple now has $145 billion in cash, and the board announced that it will return an extra $55 billion in cash to shareholders as part of a capital program that was introduced in March 2012. The board said it will double the $45 billion cash-return program, intending to up the spend on share repurchases and buybacks to $100 billion through the end of 2015.

For Q3 2013, Apple expects sales of $33.5 billion-$35.5 billion and gross margin is expected between 36 percent and 37 percent. Analysts were anticipating Q3 sales of $39.34 billion and gross margin of 38.8 percent.

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