{"id":10819,"date":"2012-04-25T01:56:43","date_gmt":"2012-04-24T23:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=10819"},"modified":"2012-04-25T10:28:54","modified_gmt":"2012-04-25T08:28:54","slug":"apple-stock-up-slashes-targets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/hardware\/10819\/apple-stock-up-slashes-targets\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple stock up, slashes targets"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apple Inc’s<\/a> quarterly results handily beat Wall Street’s estimates, driven by strengthening margins and robust global demand for its iPhones, boosting its shares more than 7 percent.<\/p>\n

Shares of the world’s most valuable technology corporation resumed their rally after a two-week decline. Apple sold 35.1 million iPhones – its flagship product which accounts for about half its revenue – in the March quarter, outpacing the 30 million or so expected by Wall Street analysts.<\/p>\n

“International iPhone sales were on fire,” Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer <\/a>told Reuters in an interview, adding that sales of the smartphone in the Greater China region jumped five-fold from the previous year.<\/p>\n

Apple sold 11.8 million iPads, the latest version of which hit the store shelves in mid-March.<\/p>\n

The strong results came after a 13 percent decline in Apple’s share price over the past couple of weeks in unusually volatile trading. The stock had long been considered a must-have in most U.S. equity portfolios.<\/p>\n

“When you have a strong rally in a stock it often sells off for no better reason than uncertainty. I think you’re going to see the naysayers go away,” said Michael Yoshikami, CEO of YCMNet Advisors.<\/p>\n

Gross margins in the fiscal second quarter climbed to 47.4 percent from 41.4 percent a year earlier, surpassing Wall Street’s average forecast of 42.8 percent.<\/p>\n

The consumer electronics giant said its fiscal second-quarter revenue rose 59 percent to $39.2 billion, better than the average analyst estimate of $36.8 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I\/B\/E\/S.<\/p>\n

Net income rose to $11.6 billion, or $12.30 a share, from $6 billion, or $6.40 per share, a year earlier. That also outpaced Wall Street’s target of $10.04 a share.<\/p>\n

Apple’s shares gained more than 7 percent to $601, from a close of $560.28 on Nasdaq<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apple Inc’s quarterly results handily beat Wall Street’s estimates, driven by strengthening margins and robust global demand for its iPhones, boosting its shares more than 7 percent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":10533,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[25,51,135,209,227],"class_list":["post-10819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hardware","tag-active","tag-apple","tag-earnings","tag-iphone","tag-smartphone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10819"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10840,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10819\/revisions\/10840"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}