Luca Maestri - Apple, Inc.
Analyst · the information you'll hear during our discussion today will consist of forward-looking statements, including without limitation those regarding revenue, gross margin, operating expenses, other income and expense, taxes, and future business outlook. Actual results or trends could differ materially from our forecast. For more information, please refer to the risk factors discussed in Apple's Form 10-K for 2016, the Form 10-Q for the first two quarters of 2017, and the Form 8-K filed with the SEC today along with the associated press release. Apple assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements or information, which speak as of their respective dates. I'd now like to turn the call over to Tim for introductory remarks
Thank you, Tim. Good afternoon, everyone. Revenue for the June quarter was $45.4 billion, up 7% over last year, an acceleration to the growth rate we reported during the first half of our fiscal year. We achieved these results despite a 200 basis point negative impact from foreign exchange on a year-over-year basis, as currency movements, especially in Europe and China, affected our reported results. Our performance was very strong across the board with growth in all our product categories and almost every market around the world. We achieved double-digit revenue growth in many developed markets, including the U.S., Canada, Germany, Spain, Australia, and Korea, and emerging markets outside of Greater China grew 19% over a year ago. Gross margin was 38.5%, at the high end of our guidance range. Operating margin was 23.7% of revenue and net income was $8.7 billion. Diluted earnings per share were $1.67, up 17% over last year, and cash flow from operations was $8.4 billion. During the quarter we sold 41 million iPhones and reduced iPhone channel inventory by 3.3 million units, leaving us with our lowest level of channel inventory in 2.5 years and well within our five-week to seven-week target inventory range. iPhone sales were up year-over-year in most markets we track, with many markets in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East growing unit sales by more than 25%. We are very pleased with these iPhone results, especially considering the tough comparison to the June quarter last year when we launched iPhone SE. iPhone ASP was $606, up from $595 a year ago, thanks to strong demand for iPhone 7 Plus, which represented a higher percentage of the iPhone mix compared to the Plus model a year ago. The impact of the stronger mix on ASP was partially offset by negative foreign exchange year over year and the reduction in channel inventory, which took place entirely at the high end of the portfolio. Customer interest and satisfaction with iPhone are very strong with both consumers and business uses. In the U.S., the latest data from 451 Research on consumers indicates a 95% customer satisfaction rating for iPhone 7 and 99% for iPhone 7 Plus. Among consumers planning to buy a smartphone, purchase intention for iPhone was nearly three times the rate of our closest competitor. Among corporate smartphone buyers, iOS customer satisfaction was 94%. And of those planning to purchase smartphones in the September quarter, 78% plan to purchase an iPhone. Turning to Services, we set an all-time quarterly record of $7.3 billion, up 22% year over year. The App Store was a major driver of this performance. And according to App Annie's latest report, it continues to be by a wide margin the preferred destination for customer purchases, generating nearly twice the revenue of Google Play. Revenue from our Apple Music streaming service and from iCloud storage also grew very strongly. And across all of our Services offerings, the number of paid subscriptions reached over 185 million, an increase of almost 20 million in the last 90 days alone. The reach, usage, and functionality of Apple Pay continue to grow. We launched Apple Pay in Italy in May. And the UAE, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden are scheduled to go live before the end of this calendar year. Apple Pay is by far the number one NFC payment service on mobile devices, with nearly 90% of all transactions globally. Momentum is strongest in international markets, where the infrastructure for mobile payments has developed faster than in the U.S. In fact, three out of four Apple Pay transactions happen outside the U.S. And with the launch of iOS 11 this fall, our users in the U.S. will be able to make and receive person-to-person payments quickly, easily, and securely. Next, I'd like to talk about the Mac. Thanks to great performance from the new MacBook Pro, we generated 7% revenue growth over last year and gained share in the global PC market based on the latest data from IDC. Customer satisfaction for Mac is very strong at 97% in the most recent survey from 451 Research, and our active installed base of Mac has grown double digits over a year ago. We ended the quarter within our four to five-week target range for Mac channel inventory, and we have a great lineup of Macs for our customers heading into the busy back-to-school season. Turning to iPad, we sold 11.4 million units, up 15% over last year. We were happy to see iPad growth in each of our geographic segments, with strong double-digit increases in key markets such as the U.S., Japan, Germany, France, and Greater China. We exited the quarter within our five to seven-week target range for iPad channel inventory. NPD indicates that iPad had 55% share of the U.S. tablet market in the month of June, including 8 of the 10 best-selling tablets. That's up from 46% share a year ago. And among tablets priced over $200, iPad's share was 89%. In addition, the most recent survey from 451 Research measured business and consumer satisfaction rates ranging from 95% to 99% across iPad models. And among those planning to buy tablets, purchase intent for iPad was over 70%. Our enterprise business continues to expand, and our customers are transforming the way work gets done with iOS and iPad. Walmart will be deploying more than 19,000 iPads for employee training across 50 states, with projections of over 225,000 associates trained on iPad by the end of the year. Initial response from businesses to iOS 11 and the new iPad Pro has been amazing. And companies including Bank of America, Medtronic, and Panera tell us that they will be rolling out the 10.5-inch iPad Pro throughout key areas of their organizations. We're also seeing real traction with our enterprise partners. Just last month, we unveiled the next set of technology announcements in our partnership with Cisco. This new wave adds a whole new category of security features designed to help enterprises and employees defend against growing cyber threats. We believe this investment in our joint security solutions for iOS will make cyber insurance even more attainable for businesses. SAP is making great strides since launching the SAP cloud platform SDK for iOS in March, with a pipeline of hundreds of global opportunities. SAP has also released SuccessFactors Mobile, its first native iOS app for human resources, which will support 47 million iPhone and iPad users worldwide across multiple industries. And our partnership with Deloitte has recently expanded to several more European countries. We're helping clients transform their businesses with iOS. We jointly developed programs such as the Connected Store, a pop-up version of a retail environment, demonstrating iOS tools for sales and demand generation, as well as tailored apps for safe associates, store management, and customers. We also had a tremendous quarter for iPad in education, up 32% year over year. Following the launch of our new iPad in March, an update to our popular Classroom app, and continued enhancements to iOS that make managing iPads in the classroom even easier. The St. Paul Public School District in Minnesota is renewing its One to One program by deploying over 40,000 iPads across every student and teacher in the district. iPad was chosen because of its power and durability, ease of use, multimedia and accessibility features, and the extensive catalog of iOS apps designed specifically for education. The Shawnee Mission School District outside Kansas City recently purchased 19,000 iPads, extending its One to One program started in 2014 thanks to iPad's intuitive interface, superior reliability, and expansive ecosystem of iOS tools for education. It was a very busy quarter for our retail and online stores, which collectively welcomed over 300 million visitors. In addition to our spectacular new store at the Dubai Mall, we opened our first stores in Singapore and in Taiwan during the quarter, expanding our total store footprint to 497 stores. In May, we kicked off Today at Apple, with new in-store programming from music to photography to art and coding. And our stores collectively hosted 87,000 sessions during the quarter. As Tim mentioned last quarter, we have entered a new chapter in retail with unique and rewarding experiences for our customers and some stunning new stores coming in the near future. Let me now turn to our cash position. We ended the quarter with $261.5 billion in cash plus marketable securities, a sequential increase of $4.7 billion. $246 billion of this cash, 94% of the total, was outside the United States. We retired $3.5 billion of debt and issued the equivalent of $10.8 billion in new euro and U.S. dollar-denominated debt during the quarter, including our second green bond, bringing us to $96.4 billion in term debt and $12 billion in commercial paper outstanding. We also returned $11.7 billion to investors during the quarter. We paid $3.4 billion in dividends and equivalents and spent $4.5 billion on repurchases of 30.4 million Apple shares through open market transactions. We launched a new $3 billion ASR program, resulting in initial delivery and retirement of 15.6 million shares, and we retired 3.4 million shares upon the completion of our 10th ASR during the quarter. We have now completed $222.9 billion of our $300 billion capital return program, including $158.5 billion in share repurchases. As we move ahead into the September quarter, I'd like to review our outlook, which includes the types of forward-looking information that Nancy referred to at the beginning of the call. We expect revenue to be between $49 billion and $52 billion. We expect gross margin to be between 37.5% and 38%. We expect OpEx to be between $6.7 billion and $6.8 billion. We expect OI&E to be about $500 million. And we expect the tax rate to be about 25.5%. Also today, our Board of Directors has declared a cash dividend of $0.63 per share of common stock, payable on August 17, 2017 to shareholders of record as of August 14, 2017. With that, I would like to open the call to questions.