Apple posts $546 million profit, shares surge (UPDATEx2)

Apple has released its Q4 2006 financial releases today after the markets close. The company has reported a net profit of $546 or $0.62 per share on revenue of $4.84 billion.

This quarter was driven by strong Mac sales, as more than 1.6 million Macs and 8.7 million iPods were sold this quarter, beating estimates of approximatively 1.5 million Macs and 8 million iPods. Analysts had expected the company to earn $0.52 per share on $4.7 billion of revenue.

Shareholders reacted positively with the quarterly financial report as Apple's stock has climbed significantly (up 6.02% or $4.49) in the after hours trading session after closing up 0.32% or $0.24 in the regular trading session.

The company will be providing further information and maybe guidance for the next quarter during a Financial Conference webcast scheduled one hour after the markets close.

Apple is also expected to give more information on the results of its internal probe regarding stock-option irregularities found in the company's financials.

MacScoop will be providing an updated summary of the conference call as update of this article.

UPDATE - CONF CALL SUMMARY:
Non exhaustive coverage (broadcast quality is not good)

- 4 to 6 weeks of iPod inventory, meets target
- Apple retail: 936 million revenue for this quarter, 60% yoy grow
- Gross margin 29.2%
- Operating expenses 803 million
- 10.1 billion cash
- Q1 07 guidance: 6~6.2 billion revenue, $0.70 to $0.73 per share earnings
- 58% of revenue came from Macs, 61% of laptops

Q/A:

- Impact on gross margin of lowest iPod pricing: It will be slightly down
- Margin will be slightly down in the december quarter
- 2007 products: "we're very confident of what we have in the pipeline" (a classic!)
- In the quarter channel inventory of iPod related products was reduced
- iTunes sales were flat due to holidays and few album releases
- Options probe, Jobs involvement : no misconduct by any current member of Apple's board
- Strong iPod sales in Japan, though CPU sales down
- JP Morgan question on International market share, gross margins on iTunes: No comment on margins, store is in breakeven, UK, Canada, Japan, Australia (40%~50%), France, Germany have smaller share
- Very strong demand on MacBook and iMac 24"
- Credit Suisse question on new nano demand: excellent customer reception, favorable reviews, iPod demand accelerated, exceeds expectations for this quarter
- Second question on Mac laptop sales: 56% increase in laptop sales
- International sales question: up 54% on international sales
- Distribution: 7000 distribution points for Macs
- Question on the iPod's gross margin: about 20% for the september quarter
- 20 million visits in Apple Stores this quarter
- over 50% purchasers are PC->Mac converts
- Shuffle shipping date: end of october (confirm)
- Over 1 million downloads for Boot Camp
- Mac margin: gross margin exceeded the guidance because of Mac margin performing well
- Google/Youtube, how this will affect Apple: Video will be big in the portable space, we're going to participate on that
- Inventory recently released / previously released product : no comment
- Mac Pro customer reception: CR very very positive but demand is associated with availability applications such as Adobe.
- Leopard new features, virtualization: no comment, Leopard will be shipping in spring
- iPod international promotion: Coke Cola in UK and Germany, 70 million song over the next song given away
- broadcast broken (or conference ended?)

UPDATE 2: Full transcript of the conf. call now available here.