Apple guides towards record sales in fourth 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.