AAPL 1Q08 Earnings Recap

Apple 1Q08 Earnings Report Stats:

Beat ?: Yes (reported $1.16/share vs estimates of $1.06/share)

Profits --> Up 36% to $1.05 Billion (from $770 million)
Sales --> Up 43% to $7.51 Billion (from $5.26 Billion)

Gross Margins --> Down 2.2% to 32.9% (from 35.1% yoy)

Mac Revenues--> Up 54% yoy
Mac Unit Sales --> Up 51% to 2.289 million Macs

Ipod Revenues --> Up 8% yoy (prob due to better mix re higher ASP's of Ipod Touch)
Ipod Unit Sales --> Up 1% to 10.644 million Ipods

Iphone Unit Sales --> 1.7 million Iphones (no yoy comparison)

Other Highlights + Guidance:
*International sales accounted for 44% of the company's revenues
*International sales grew 47%, U.S. sales grew 40%

*U.S. education business generated Mac unit growth of 35% yoy...highest growth rate in any qtr over the last 8 years
*According to industry survey data published by NPD, Apple's U.S. MP3 marketshare is currently around 73%
*Apple has surpassed Walmart as the largest retailer of music in the U.S.

*Apple's effective Tax Rate for the qtr was 29%, below the analyst expected 32%

*Apple ended the quarter with $19.4 Billion in CASH!

*Lastly, Apple has a well-documented history of guiding conservatively and they kept up that reputation. Per Bloomberg, Apple's profit forecast has now missed analysts' estimates in 9 of the past 10 quarters! Meanwhile, the company has topped its own forecast in each quarter for the past two years! With that said, Apple’s CFO provided the following 2Q08 guidance on their earnings conference call - “Looking ahead to the third quarter of fiscal 2008, we expect revenue of about $7.2 billion and earnings per diluted share of about $1.00.” According to Bloomberg, the street was expecting EPS guidance of $1.10/share.

Full Disclosure: I own shares of AAPL.