Apple guides towards record sales in fourth quarter

Higher than expected margins at smartphone manufacturer Apple made up for lower than forecast revenues in the third quarter.

That allowed the Cupertino, California-based tech giant to boost its net profits by 31.3% in the fourth quarter to reach $11.12bn as sales jumped 22% to $51.5bn.

Earnings per share came in at $1.96 - boosted by its share repurchase programme - well above the comparable figure of $1.42 for the previous year.

Analysts had penciled in EPS of $1.88 on revenues of $51.1bn.

Critically, the firm was able to boost its gross margins to 39.9%, higher than the between 38.5% and 39.5% it had anticipated.

iPhone sales reached 48.04m units in the company´s fiscal fourth quarter ended on 26 September, ahead of the 39.27m sold a year earlier. Nonetheless, that was shy of the 48.72m expected by analysts.

For the current quarter, Apple guided towards sales of between $75.5bn and $77.5bn on the back of gross margins of between 39% and 40%.

That meant the company expected to beat last year´s record sales.

The number crunchers on Wall Street had projected revenues of $77.14bn with a gross margin of 39.8%.

Shares in Apple dipped 0.65% in regular trading on the NASDAQ to close at $114.55, rebounding 0.61% in after-hours trading to $115.25.