However, Apple came up short versus revenue expectations in core product categories including the company’s iPhone business and services.
Apple shares fell about 1% in extended trading.
Here is how Apple did versus Refinitiv consensus estimates:
EPS $1.29 vs. $1.27 est.
Revenue. $90.15 billion vs. $88.90 billion estimated, up 8.1% year-over-year
iPhone revenue: $42.63 billion vs. $43.21 billion estimated, up 9.67% year-over-year
Mac revenue: $11.51 billion vs. $9.36 billion estimated, up 25.39% year-over-year
iPad revenue: $7.17 billion vs. $7.94 billion estimated, down 13.06% year-over-year
Other Products revenue: $9.65 billion vs. $9.17 billion estimated, up 9.85% year-over-year
Services revenue: $19.19 billion vs. $20.10 billion estimated, up 4.98% year-over-year
Gross margin: 42.3% vs. 42.1% estimated
Apple did not provide official guidance for its first fiscal quarter, which ends in December and contains Apple’s biggest sales season of the year. It hasn’t provided guidance since 2020, citing uncertainty.
Apple increased revenue by 8% during the quarter, and Apple CEO Tim Cook told CNBC that it would’ve grown “double-digits” if not for the strong dollar. Total sales in Apple’s fiscal 2022 were up 8% to $394.3 billion.
“The foreign exchange headwinds were over 600 basis points for the quarter,” Cook told CNBC’s Steve Kovach. “So it was significant. We would have grown in double digits without the foreign exchange headwinds.”
Cook told CNBC that Apple had slowed the pace of its hiring. Other tech companies are looking to make cuts ahead of a possible recession and as interest rates rise.
“We are hiring deliberately. And so we we’ve slowed the pace of hiring,” Cook said.
Although Apple’s iPhone business increased sales by over 9% on an annual basis, it came up short versus analyst expectations. Apple’s September quarter had 8 days of iPhone 14 sales, and analysts are closely looking for details about if Apple customers are trading up for more expensive models or if the new devices are poised to sustain higher sales through Apple’s fiscal 2023.
Cook indicated that Apple’s performance in phone sales was strong despite signs that other smartphone companies are struggling with a recent decrease in demand and said the company grew “switchers,” or people who bought an Apple phone after having an Android device. He added that the company’s high-end phones, the iPhone 14 Pro, were supply constrained.
“We clearly countered the industry trends on the on the phone if you look at third party estimates of what the smartphone industry did,” Cook said.
Apple’s services business also missed estimates.
Apple’s services business reported just under 5% growth during the quarter, a significant slowdown for the investor-favorite and profitable business line versus last quarter, which was 12%.
For the fiscal year, Apple services grew just over 14% to $78.13 billion, a slower rate of growth than 2021’s 16% annual increase, and much slower than 2020’s 27% services growth.
The business includes several different lines, including Apple’s online services like Apple Music and Apple TV+, revenue from the App Store, hardware warranties, and search deals with companies like Google.
Apple recently increased prices for Apple Music and Apple TV+, but the increases started during the December quarter.
Cook said the price increases were “disconnected” from Apple’s services performance.
“Well, they’re in the if you look at the price increases as an example, Music, the licensing cost has increased,” Cook said.
He added that Apple TV+ has more shows now, so Apple feels that the product is more valuable.
Investors generally like Apple’s move into services because the products are more profitable than Apple’s hardware and often bring in recurring revenue.
There were a few bright spots in Apple’s report. Mac sales were up over 25% to $11.51 billion, even as data points from parts suppliers, chipmakers, and competing PC firms were pointing during the quarter to a significant slowdown in laptop and desktop sales after two boom years during the pandemic.
Apple’s Other Products category, which includes Apple Watch and AirPods, also saw an annual increase and beat Wall Street expectations. Some analysts believed that Apple’s wearables were most likely to be hurt if recessionary fears slowed discretionary spending. That business increased nearly 10% year-over-year to $9.65 billion.
Apple’s iPad, which had been hampered by supply issues, decreased nearly 10% year-over-year and is Apple’s smallest individual line of business. The company recently released new models in October, which could boost sales just after the September quarter finished. Cook said that it was a difficult comparison because last year, Apple released new iPads in September.
Artificial intelligence chipmaker Cerebras Systems said on Friday that it’s withdrawing plans for an IPO, days after announcing that it raised over $1 billion in a fundraising round.
In a filing with the SEC, Cerebras said it does not intend to conduct a proposed offering “at this time,” but didn’t provide a reason. A spokesperson told CNBC on Friday that the company still hopes to go public as soon as possible.
Cerebras filed for an IPO just over a year ago, as it was ramping up to take on Nvidia in an effort to create processors for running generative AI models. The filing revealed a heavy reliance on a single customer in the United Arab Emirates, Microsoft-backed G42, which is also a Cerebras investor.
In its prospectus, Cerebras said it had given voluntary notice to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States about selling shares to G42. In March, the company announced that the committee had provided clearance.
Since its initial filing to go public on the Nasdaq, Cerebras has shifted its focus away from selling systems and more toward providing a cloud service for accepting incoming queries to models that use its chips underneath.
The announced withdrawal comes three days into a U.S. government shutdown that’s left agencies like the SEC operating with a small staff. In a plan for a shutdown published in August, the SEC said its electronic system EDGAR “is operated pursuant to a contract and thus will remain fully functional as long as funding for the contractor remains available through permitted means.”
On Tuesday, Cerebras said it had raised $1.1 billion at a valuation of $8.1 billion in a private funding round. At the time, CEO Andrew Feldman said that the company still wanted to go public, rather than continue to raise venture capital.
“I don’t think this is an indication of a preference for one or the other,” he told CNBC in an interview. “I think we have tremendous opportunities in front of us, and I think it’s good practice, when you have enormous opportunities, not to let them fall by the wayside for lack of capital.”
Feldman thought the original prospectus from last year was out of date, especially considering developments in AI, the spokesperson said on Friday.
Well heeled technology companies have been quickly signing up for additional infrastructure to handle demand. On Tuesday CoreWeave, which rents out Nvidia chips through a cloud service, said it had signed a $14.2 billion agreement with Meta. ChatGPT operator OpenAI said last week that it had committed to spending $300 billion on cloud services from Oracle.
The government shutdown did not factor into Cerebras’ decision, the spokesperson said.
An employee arranges a salad dressing display at an Amazon Fresh grocery store on December 12, 2024 in Federal Way, Washington.
David Ryder | Getty Images
Amazon is closing four more Fresh supermarkets in Southern California as the e-commerce giant continues to focus its grocery strategy around Whole Foods and delivery.
The closures will take place in the coming weeks, Amazon confirmed to CNBC. They follow the shuttering of four other U.S. locations in recent months, in Washington, Virginia, New York and a Los Angeles suburb.
“Certain locations work better than others, and after an assessment, we’ve made the decision to close these Amazon Fresh locations,” Amazon spokesperson Griffin Buch said in a statement. “We’re working closely with affected employees to help them find new roles within Amazon wherever possible.”
At one Fresh supermarket in La Verne, California, employees were told to gather for an all-hands meeting on Wednesday, according to an internal message viewed by CNBC. They learned at the meeting that the store would close in mid-November, and that employees would receive a severance package, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the details were confidential.
The other three stores that are closing are in cities of Mission Viejo, La Habra and Whittier.
Last week, Amazon said it intends to close 14 Fresh grocery stores in the U.K. and convert its five other locations there into Whole Foods markets.
Amazon said it regularly evaluates its store portfolio, which can lead to opening, reopening, relocating or closing certain locations. In the U.S., the company has more than 60 remaining Fresh stores. Last year, the company removed its “Just Walk Out” cashierless technology from the stores. It’s also been culling its footprint of Go cashierless convenience stores.
Amazon has been determined to become a major grocery player for nearly two decades. The company launched Amazon Fresh in 2007, then a pilot project for fresh food delivery, before acquiring upscale chain Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in 2017, its biggest purchase on record.
Amazon debuted its Fresh grocery chain in 2020, with an eye toward mass-market shoppers. The rollout has been turbulent since its early days.
The company opened a flurry of Fresh locations by 2022, but the expansion plans ran into CEO Andy Jassy’s widespread cost-cutting efforts as the company reckoned with the impact of rising interest rates and soaring inflation. In 2023, Amazon announced it would shut some Fresh stores and halt further openings temporarily as it evaluated how to make the chain stand out for shoppers.
While it’s closing Fresh stores, Amazon continues to “innovate and invest in making grocery shopping easier, faster, and more affordable,” Buch said. The company still maintains 500 Whole Foods locations and has opened mini “daily shop” Whole Foods stores in New York City.
On Wednesday, Amazon also launched a new “price-conscious” grocery brand that will be offered online and in its physical stores. And last month, Amazon expanded same-day delivery of fresh foods to more pockets of the U.S.
Jassy and other company executives have touted the success of sales of “everyday essentials” within its online grocery business, which refers to items such as canned goods, paper towels, dish soap and snacks. Jassy told investors at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in May that he remains “bullish” on grocery, calling it a “significant business” for Amazon.
Inside Google’s quantum computing lab in Santa Barbara, California.
CNBC
Quantum computing stocks are wrapping up a big week of double-digit gains.
Shares of Rigetti Computing, D-Wave Quantum and Quantum Computing have surged more than 20%. Rigetti and D-Wave Quantum have more than doubled and tripled, respectively, since the start of the year. Arqit Quantum skyrocketed more than 32% this week.
The jump in shares followed a wave of positive news in the quantum space.
Rigetti said it had purchase orders totalling $5.7 million for two of its 9-qubit Novera quantum computing systems. The owner of drugmaker Novo Nordisk and the Danish government also invested 300 million euros in a quantum venture fund.
In a blog post earlier this week, Nvidia also highlighted accelerated computing, which it argues can make “quantum computing breakthroughs of today and tomorrow possible.”