Apple's spooky Q4 2024 earnings are on Halloween
by Malcolm Owen · AppleInsiderApple is reporting its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings for 2024 on October 31, Halloween. Here's what happened in the quarter, and what to expect from the results.
Apple has confirmed it will be holding its quarterly results on October 31. The release will be accompanied by the usual investor and analyst conference call, which will occur at 5 PM eastern time.
The call usually helmed by CEO Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri. As Maestri is stepping down from his role at the end of 2024, this will be his last conference call as CFO, with replacement Kevan Parekh taking over in 2025.
Q3 and Q4 releases
The fourth quarter deals with Apple's financials for a three-month period running until the end of September. While this quarter does include quite a few new products, their release late in the period will ultimately truly matter in the first quarter of the 2024-2025 financial year.
The release of the iPhone 16 collection on September 20, alongside USB-C AirPods Max, AirPods, the Apple Watch Series 10, and Apple Watch Ultra 2 in black, won't make that much of a dent in the finances. They will, however, make a considerably bigger impact on the Q1 2025 results, with high holiday quarter sales resulting in what is Apple's typically largest quarter of the year.
However, releases from Q3 should make more of a difference, since they've had an entire quarter of sales. This chiefly consists of Apple's iPad Pro update to M4, the iPad Air with M2, and the Apple Pencil Pro.
The third quarter was also unseasonably bereft of Mac launches. Expectations of another Apple Event for Mac and iPad has one being held in October, but it will be too late to impact the Q4 results.
The year-ago quarter - Q4 2023
The results in the Q4 2023 financials will be the yardstick that analysts will use to compare against the 2024 equivalents.
In Q4 2023, Apple reported revenue of $89.5 billion, a minor 0.7% year-on-year dip from Q4 2022. It also reported an earnings per share of $1.46.
Revenue from iPhone sales rose 2.8% year-on-year to $43.8 billion. Meanwhile, the ever-reliable Services arm saw continued growth of 16.3% to $22.3 billion.
However, the rest of the units saw bigger dips in financial performance. Sales of iPad reached a revenue of $6.4 billion, down 10.2% from Q4 2023, while Mac plummeted 33.8% YoY to $7.6 billion.
The Wearables, Home, and Accessories unit saw a more muted drop, down 3.4% to $9.3 billion.
That quarter should've benefited from full-quarter sales of Q3 2024 launches, including M2 Max and M2 Ultra versions of the Mac Studio, a New Mac Pro with Apple Silicon, and a 15-inch MacBook Air. It also saw updates to the iPhone 15 family of devices, USB-C AirPods Pro, USB-C Earpods, the Apple Watch Series 9, and the Apple Watch Ultra 2 toward the end of the period.
Last quarter - Q3 2024
Q3 2024 saw Apple improve considerably compared to Q3 2023, with its sales beating Wall Street expectations in most aspects.
For the period, Apple saw revenue go up to $85.78 billion, with an earnings per share of $1.40.
iPhone saw revenue of $39.3 billion, a mere 0.9% year-on-year drop. The only other category to see a lack of growth was Wearables, Home, and Accessories, which dipped 2.3% to $8.01 billion.
The iPad saw massive growth, jumping 23.7% year-on-year to $55.6 billion, Mac grew 2.5% to $7.45 billion, and Services grew 14.1% year-on-year to $23.9 billion.
Full Year Results
The fourth quarter usually ushers in the full-year results for Apple's finances, just ahead of the busy holiday season quarter.
In the 2023 financial year, Apple saw gross sales of $383.3 billion, a marginal 2.8% dip from 2022's record result. The gross margin hit $169.1 billion, also down 1% year-on-year.
For the first three quarters of the year, Apple has so far reported $296.1 billion in gross sales and a gross margin of $136.8 billion.
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