the results

After the market close on April 19th, AAPL announced earnings results for its 2Q11 (AAPL’s fiscal year ends in September).  The company made $5.99 billion, or $6.40 per share, over the three months, on revenue of $24.7 billion.  These figures were up 95% and 83% year on year, respectively.   Wall Street analysts had expected eps of $5.37.

the details

AAPL sold an eye-popping 18.6 million iPhones, 113% more than in the comparable period of 2010.

It sold 3.76 million Macs during the quarter, up 28% year on year.

In a transition quarter, the company sold 4.7 million iPads. There’s no year-ago comparison, but sales were down by about a third from the December period’s 7.3 million.

The iPod, which in its heyday was around half the company, sold 9.0 million units, down 17% year on year.  iPod now represents only 6.5% of APPL’s revenue.  I see this as less a comment about MP3 players than one about how incredibly the rest of APPL has been growing.

Geographically, Asia-Pacific, up 151% year on year, was the star; Europe, “only” up 49%, was the caboose on the AAPL train.

items to note

Greater China (the mainland + Hong Kong and Taiwan) are now accounting for 10% of AAPL’s sales, up from less than 2% a few years ago.

AAPL is now guiding to a lower full-year tax rate, meaning it’s expectations for the share of revenues coming from lower-tax foreign areas have risen.

Of the 18.6 million iPhones sold, 1.7 million went to build telecom carriers’ inventories rather than into the hands of consumers.  Part of this probably represents the rollout of the iPhone to VZ in the US.  But I think it also likely indicates that carriers sense strong demand for AAPL phones and want extra insurance they won’t be out of stock.  …more problems for Nokia?

Although AAPL made around 7 million iPad1s in 1Q11, it produced only two-thirds of that number of iPad1s + iPad2s during 2Q11.  This comes despite AAPL’s assertions that it has had no supply problems from the earthquake/tsunamis in Japan, and its comments about “staggering” demand for iPad2 and the “mother of all” backlogs for the device.  This may simply be the way that the inventory rundown of the older model and the rampup of the new are playing out.  It may also be that AAPL isn’t able to get all the resins or components or other raw materials it needs company-wide and is allocating them to higher-margin smartphones.  Or it may be that AAPL wants to cultivate an it’s-hard-to-get mentality to heighten interest in the device, since consumers have as yet no effective alternative.  This isn’t a bad thing, just something to note–and watch.

the stock

Investors bid the stock up–but not by a lot–in trading on Wednesday and Thursday.

There may be a technical reason for the tepid response.  Early this month, NASDAQ announced that it is rebalancing its NASDAQ 100 index.  The weighting of AAPL, the largest index constituent, is being reduced from about 20% of the index to around 12%.  This has generated short-term selling pressure from index-tracking investment pools.

Why do this?  When NASDAQ 100 ETFs were launched a decade or so ago, these vehicles had difficulty meeting SEC-mandated rules on maintaining a diversified portfolio, since then-giants like MSFT or CSCO were so large a part of the index.   In order to be sure of adhering to SEC guidelines, NASDAQ slashed the relative weights of MSFT et al  and beefed up those of then-minnows like AAPL.  Now it has the same problem again, only with different names.  So it’s applying the same process to today’s titans.

Yes, AAPL is scarcely an undiscovered gem.  And, yes, reversion to the mean does happen.  But at 14x fiscal 2011 earnings, AAPL’s stock is trading at right around the market multiple.  That looks way too low to me.

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