
Apple Q4 Results - css
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/10/apple-reports-fourth-quarter-results/
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ihuman
MacStories and Six Colors created graphs comparing the data from this quarter
to past quarterly results

[https://www.macstories.net/news/apple-q4-2019-results-64-bil...](https://www.macstories.net/news/apple-q4-2019-results-64-billion-
revenue/#graphical-visualization)

[https://sixcolors.com/post/2019/10/apple-results-64b-in-
reve...](https://sixcolors.com/post/2019/10/apple-results-64b-in-revenue-on-
record-services-income/)

~~~
privateSFacct
What terrible charts.

I won't go through it line by line but why highlight Q1 vs Q4 instead of prior
year Q4 vs current period Q4 (ie, year vs year).

Highlighting periods with holiday sales against current nonholiday periods is
ridiculous.

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ihuman
I updated my comment to include Six Colors's article, which has more year-
over-year graphs

~~~
nier
Most of the graphs on Six Colors have 2019-Q4 missing and some of the numbers
are wrong. For example compare total revenue change for 2019-Q2 with the
actual numbers in the second chart above.

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sulam
... not paying close enough attention to Apples fiscal year...

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mercutio2
Apple’s fiscal year begins in October and ends the following September. The
just released results were for the fourth quarter of the 2019 fiscal year,
2019-Q4.

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sulam
Wow sorry!

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breatheoften
What exactly is the advantage of reaching a cash neutral position? If you are
a company that can reliably do that does that mean you no longer have to grow
— since your investors are primarily attracted to a reliably stable ability to
generate dividends?

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privateSFacct
The history is that apple had a crazy cash position partly because of the need
to keep cash overseas to avoid tax on repatriation. What they did was borrow
against that overseas cash to get US based on dollars.

Cash neutral doesn't relate to growth, if you grew you'd need to increase cash
to cover working capital needs generally (ie, Apple first has to pay for
parts, inventory, factories, staff for them etc before it gets revenue from
sales).

Excess cash above this - it can be argued is not useful for apple to hold. Ie,
investors can earn as much on cash as apple AND might want to invest it in
things that theoretically could earn more - especially now with low interest
rates. They can get to cash neutral a couple of ways. Because gross net income
is going down, share buybacks one option - they've already been doing lots of
that. Dividends is another. Pushing a bit on R&D might be another. No rush on
that change.

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microtherion
Not only is excess cash not very useful, I'd argue that it can be actively
harmful, as it makes the company a target for a leveraged buyout.

Though maybe this does not apply to Apple, as a potential buyout would have to
be about 30x as large as the largest leveraged buyout in history.

~~~
privateSFacct
What is impressive in some ways is their spending discipline with this
mountain of cash. Many business have tried to buy their way to growth with
horrible results in my view.

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mikece
Is it too early to tell how much the Apple Card contributes to Apple's
revenue?

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ogre_codes
Apple Card is likely one of those services which will have little impact on
revenue and earning, but outsized impact on stickiness of the iPhone as a
platform. If you prefer Apple Card and the way you interact with it, it's
going to be that much tougher to move to Android.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
Have I missed some feature of the Apple Card that exclusively ties with Apple
Pay (nfc)?

I love Apple Pay, have all my cards in Wallet, don’t have an Apple Card. So I
don t see how it’s a lock-in feature.

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pertymcpert
It's not Apple Pay, it's the wallet. You used the wallet to track spending and
pay it off, and collect the cash back.

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FighterMafia
For context: the Q4 revenue/EPS results came in ABOVE sell-side consensus per
Factset and Q1 guidance is also ABOVE Factset consensus on both revenues and
gross margins.

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bradhe
> revenue between $85.5 billion and $89.5 billion

A $4B margin is a pretty big margin...

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selectodude
The target is $87.5 billion +/\- 2.5 percent. Seems pretty reasonable to me.

~~~
bradhe
Totally reasonable, especially for a company like apple! In real terms, it
ends up being like half a WeWork.

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selectodude
Half of WeWork is probably closer in value to my car than anything.

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tempsy
Definitely my best stock pick of the year.

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newshorts
It was good, but everything went up this year. It was extremely easy if you
bought the dip last dec.

I’m waiting for another dip... hoping to cash in. Might be waiting a while
after this earnings report & fed announcement today.

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tempsy
Everything is easy in hindsight.

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gigatexal
Net income was?

Also this BS about stock buybacks and dividends to become cash neutral is
stupid. They should be betting on moonshot things that will be the next iPhone
instead of all of this financial engineering.

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ogre_codes
If finding "the next iPhone" just required spending large enough sums of
money, then Microsoft would have beat them to the punch before the iPhone came
out.

In all of history there have only been a few iPhone class disruptors. They are
rare, and they come based more on timing and the presence of enabling
technologies than any particular company simply investing billions in R&D.

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VRay
yeah, these tech giants are constantly hiring tons of people and snapping up
every interesting startup that rolls along in a desperate bid to turn money
into more profitable products

Although I do wish Apple would buy some AAA game studios and make some AAA-
quality games for their platforms..

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scarface74
The game market is extremely small compared to other markets.

Sony just announced their quarterly numbers. The PS4 just crossed the 100
million unit threshold over its entire lifetime. Apple sells that many phones
in two quarters.

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pastor_elm
just last year I thought how much more can they grow now that they're over a
trillion dollar market cap? Now I see people lining up for disposable $250
earbuds and now I know. (the same people that were happy with their terrible
$15 ones btw)

