Apple Computer Inc. on Wednesday reported an US$8 million loss or $0.02 per share for its fiscal first quarter 2003 ended December 28, 2002. The company reported that revenues for the quarter were $1.47 billion, up 7 percent from the year-ago quarter, and gross margins were 27.6 percent, down from 30.7 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 43 percent of the quarter’s revenues.
“We have a very strong new product pipeline for 2003, which we kicked off by introducing the two most advanced notebook computers in the industry last week at Macworld,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’re going to keep investing through this downturn and continue to move our products and distribution channels ever further ahead of our competitors, so that when the economy rebounds we will be positioned for growth.”
According to Apple the quarter’s results included a $17 million after-tax restructuring charge and a $2 million after-tax accounting transition adjustment. Excluding these non-recurring items, Apple’s net profit for the quarter would have been $11 million, or $0.03 per share.
Analyst’s consensus polled by Thompson First Call for the quarter was $0.03.
Macintosh shipments for the quarter were on par with last year with 743,000 Macs being shipped from the company.
“We were extremely pleased with our ability to achieve our revenue target for the first quarter while reducing channel inventories by 11 percent within the quarter,” said Fred Anderson, Apple’s CFO. “Continued strong asset management enabled us to increase cash to over $4.4 billion.
Looking ahead, Anderson says he sees the second quarter of 2003 to be relatively flat with the December quarter for revenue, but he does expect a slight profit for the quarter.
Apple closed the day’s trading on Nasdaq at $14.43 down $0.18 or 1.23 percent. In after-hours trading Apple stock is currently trading at $14.34.