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Head Nicely Above Water (10/15/03)
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The results are in, people, and the ink is blacker than the box-office prospects of any post-Gigli Ben 'n' Jen flicks (sorry, Kev): according to the official press release, Apple posted a final profit of $44 million in its fourth fiscal quarter of 2003, thus prompting a perplexed Rob Enderle to scratch his head and go "Whuh?" Yes, it's yet another profitable quarter for Apple, and one which compares pretty darn favorably to its $45 million loss a year ago. Party on, Wayne!
Of course, it's not quite as simple as all that; Apple's $44 million profit includes "an after-tax investment gain of $6 million, a favorable accounting transition adjustment of $3 million related to Apple's stock repurchase agreement, and a gain on settlement of the stock repurchase agreement of $6 million"-- after which, Apple's real recurring profit was $29 million. Still, that's 8 cents a share, which means Apple still beat Wall Street's 7-cent consensus by a penny-- or, rather, 362.5 million pennies. Give or take. Couple that with Apple's prediction of a "sequential increase in revenues" and a "slight sequential increase in GAAP earnings" next quarter, and things are looking pretty rosy.
But not as rosy as things will look for the winner of our quarterly Beat The Analysts contest! As usual, we haven't fully tabulated the results yet (we figure we'll do this quarter's extended stats sometime before Zorg the Conqueror's three-eyed, two-headed visage graces the front of the new trillion-dollar bill), but we've done just enough analysis of the data to determine that this quarter's winner is none other than faithful viewer Patrik Montgomery! Many kudos to Patrik for being the first entrant to guess Apple's $29 million profit on the nose, which is technically infinitely closer than what Wall Street predicted. For his analyst-beating financial prowess, we'll be contacting Patrik shortly to ascertain his shipping address and bodily dimensions so that we can send him an AtAT prize pack chock-full of appropriately-sized garments and one-size-fits-most stickers. Unless, of course, he opts for some dust-choked and arcane shrink-wrapped software from the infamous AtAT Baffling Vault of Antiquity™...
Meanwhile, Fred Anderson's Wild 'n' Wacky Earnings Conference Call is slated to begin at 5:30 PM EDT, and it's sure to delight and amaze us all with all sorts of splendiforous facts and figures ("a full 31% of Apple's gross revenue for the quarter came from the PayPal 'Donate Now' button we added to our web site"), but we figured we'd get this episode out now and save something to write about in our next episode. After all, nothing else is going to happen tomorrow, right?...
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 10/15/03 episode: October 15, 2003: Apple posts a $44 million profit; naysayers are baffled. Meanwhile, PC World conclusively proves that the G5 is actually slower than a 386, and Microsoft admits that the next major version of Windows won't surface until 2006...
Other scenes from that episode: 4271: We'll Even Pay Shipping (10/15/03) Okay, okay, we know-- the whole Mac community is frothing at the mouth because of the new test results published by that paragon of platform-balanced reporting, PC World. As faithful viewer mrmgraphics was first to point out to us, said test results show a single 2.2 GHz Athlon 64 FX-51 trouncing a dual 2GHz Power Mac G5 in just about every test... 4272: Better Call It "Latehorn" (10/15/03) Nine days 'til Panther! Nine days 'til Panther! Not that we're getting excited or anything. Sure, we're looking forward to hours of productivity irretrievably lost to Exposé as we repeatedly press the F11 key and watch all of our windows skitter off the screen like so many startled cockroaches when the kitchen light comes on, but mostly we're just anticipating a whole heaping helping of Schadenfreude and gloating when we're all gleefully running Panther and the Windoids are still waiting for Longhorn...
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