The company delivered one of its most robust earnings reports to date, and definitely the strongest earnings report for July, which gave the company's share price a tremendous boost in yesterday's trading session.
Apple posted quarterly revenue equal to $53.8 billion, which surpassed the initial forecasts for just $53.39 billion and at the same time surpassed its past performance for the same period one year ago, by measuring marginal growth of one per cent. The diluted earnings per share measured $2.18, while the initial forecasts expected the EPS to reach $2.10.
Apple also announced its projections for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2019 which gave investors additional reasons to remain optimistic about the company's near-future, despite recent misfires with the Trump administration and the ongoing debate as to how much the company has to pay in tariffs for the iPhone components that it produces in China. Even though the company expects to face a tax rate of approximately 16.5 per cent by the end of the fiscal year, it also projects further growth in the revenue between $61 billion and $64 billion.
Apple’s CEO Tim Cook commented on the company’s performance for the third quarter by stating that:
“This was our biggest June quarter ever – driven by all-time record revenue from Services, accelerating growth from Wearables, strong performance from iPad and Mac and significant improvement in iPhone trends. These results are promising across all our geographic segments, and we’re confident about what’s ahead. The balance of calendar 2019 will be an exciting period, with major launches on all of our platforms, new services and several new products.” [source]
Thus, on this overwhelmingly upbeat performance data and strong outlook for future growth the share price managed to finally break above the previous consolidation range, which had developed just below the major resistance level at 208.70, and close way above it. The share price closed yesterday's trading session at 217.45, which measures a total of 3.71 per cent appreciation in the daily trading.
The price has thus managed to enter within the boundaries of the all-time high price range from late-2018, and given the favourable prospects for sustained growth in the fourth quarter, the price is likely to continue to appreciate through the end of 2019 and even test the strength of the range's upper-boundary.