Apple shares sail to record high on healthy iPhone sales

Apple announced increased sales in its April-June quarter with a milestone 1.2 billion iPhones sold.

Apple Inc on Tuesday delivered surprisingly strong fiscal third-quarter earnings and signalled that its upcoming 10th-anniversary phone is on schedule, driving the stock up 6 percent to an all-time high in after-hours trading.

The stock climbed above its intraday record high of $159, after the company reported better-than-expected iPhone sales, revenue and earnings per share. The stock price move was expected to help drive the Dow Jones Industrial Average over the 22,000 mark on Wednesday.

The April-June quarter is traditionally a soft one for Apple as the market waits for the September launch of new iPhone models. But Tuesday’s results show that iPhone buyers may be less inclined than they once were to delay purchases until a new model is out.

The iPad product lines also showed unexpected strength, service revenue continues to grow at a healthy clip, and even the much-maligned Apple Watch showed a 50 percent sales increase.

Apple is widely tipped to adopt higher-resolution OLED displays for the latest iPhone, along with better touchscreen technology and wireless charging - which could come with a $1,000 plus price tag.

The phone is expected to launch in September.

The company forecast total revenue of between $49 billion and $52 billion for the current fourth quarter, while analysts on average were expecting $49.21 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Apple's fourth quarter generally includes first-weekend sales of the company's latest devices.

The forecast "makes it fairly certain that at least some new iPhone models will be released on the normal schedule,” said analyst Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research. “That doesn’t necessarily mean all new models will go on sale then, or that they’ll all be in abundant supply, but I would think it means that at the very least the successors to the current phones will be available."

The company said iPhone sales rose 1.6 percent to 41.03 million in the third quarter ended July 1, above analysts' average estimate of 40.7 million units, according to FactSet StreetAccount. Apple sold 40.4 million iPhones a year earlier.

But a lower average iPhone selling price of $606, well below Wall Street expectations of $621, caused iPhone revenue to come in at $24.8 billion, below expectations of $25.5 billion.

Apple Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri told Reuters the weak price was partly explained by Apple lowering the flow of inventory by 3.3 million units, which he said were “entirely at the high end of the range.”

Apple reports how many phones it sells to retailers, not how many phones it sells to consumers, what is known as a sell-in basis. When factoring how many existing “high end” phones the company cleared out of retail inventory, Maestri said average selling prices were higher.

The company's net income rose to $8.72 billion, or $1.67 per share, from $7.80 billion, or $1.42 per share, a year earlier.

Revenue rose to $45.41 billion from $42.36 billion in the quarter, typically the company's weakest, beating expectations of $44.89 billion.