Apple released their FY 23 fourth quarter after the market closed and they beat analyst expectations for sales and earnings per share, but revealed that overall sales fell for the fourth quarter in a row. Every hardware business outside the iPhone declined year-over-year, with big drops in the iPad and Mac segments.

Apple highlighted stronger-than-expected 16% growth in its online services division to make up for weakness in hardware sales.  CNBC broke down the numbers as follows:

• EPS: $1.46 per share, versus $1.39 per share expected
• Revenue: $89.50 billion, versus $89.28 billion expected
• iPhone revenue: $43.81 billion, versus $43.81 billion expected
• Mac revenue: $7.61 billion versus $8.63 billion expected
• iPad revenue: $6.44 billion, versus $6.07 billion expected
• Wearables revenue: $9.32 billion, versus $9.43 billion expected
• Services revenue: $22.31 billion, versus $21.35 billion expected
• Gross margin: 45.2% versus 44.5% expected

Apple didn’t give formal guidance, but CFO Luca Maestri usually provides data points on the earnings call. Analysts are looking for $122.98 billion in revenue for the December quarter, which would be a return to year-over-year growth in Apple’s most important quarter. 

Net income was $22.96 billion, versus $20.72 billion in net income a year ago. For Apple’s entire fiscal year, it reported $383.29 billion in sales, down about 3% from Apple’s fiscal 2022. Quarterly revenue declined less than 1% in the September quarter.

The company’s iPhone sales were in line with Wall Street expectations and increased more than 2% from last year. It was the only hardware line for Apple to show growth in the quarter, and the period only included about a week of iPhone 15 sales. 

Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the iPhone 15 was doing better than the iPhone 14 did during the September quarter last year. 

“If you look at iPhone 15 for that period of time and compare it to iPhone 14 for the same time in the year-ago quarter, iPhone 15 did better than iPhone 14,” Cook told CNBC’s Steve Kovach. He added that Apple’s more expensive Pro and Pro Max iPhones were supply constrained because of high demand.

Apple’s Mac and iPad businesses both suffered during the quarter. Maestri, Apple’s CFO, had warned on a call with analysts after third-quarter results that iPad and Mac sales would fall by double-digit percentages.

Mac sales came in below Wall Street expectations, falling nearly 34% on an annual basis. Apple held an unusual nighttime launch event for its new MacBook Pro laptops and iMac desktop last month. While sales of the new devices aren’t included in the quarter, Apple was signaling that new products could boost sales once again thanks to its new M3 chips. ere supply constrained because of high demand. 

Mac sales came in below Wall Street expectations, falling nearly 34% on an annual basis. Apple held an unusual nighttime launch event for its new MacBook Pro laptops and iMac desktop last month. While sales of the new devices aren’t included in the quarter, Apple was signaling that new products could boost sales once again thanks to its new M3 chips.

Cook told CNBC that the Mac comparison is to “an all-time record” fourth quarter, which followed a huge supply disruption and pushed what would have been third-quarter sales into the last quarter of 2022. “So, the comparison point here is very difficult,” he said.

“I think the Mac is going to have a significantly better quarter in the December quarter. We’ve got the M3, we’ve got the new products, and we don’t have the compare phenomenon on a year-over-year basis,” Cook said, referring to an unusually strong market for Macs in 2022. 

Cook said that that overall market for personal computers is “challenging.” For more, read the full CNBC report.

FY23 Q4 Consolidated Financial Statements by Jack Purcher on Scribd