Chief Executive Tim Cook said the impact will be even worse during the current Christmas sales quarter.
The problems in the supply chain cost Apple Inc. $ 6 billion in revenue in the company’s fourth quarter, which fell short of Wall Street’s expectations.
Cook told Reuters News on Thursday that the 25th. While Apple had seen “a significant improvement” in these Southeast Asian facilities through October, the chip shortage persists and now affects “most of our products,” Cook said.
“We’re doing everything we can to get more [chips] and also everything we can operationally do to make sure we move forward as quickly as possible, ”said Cook.
Cook said the company expects year-over-year growth for the quarter ending December. Analysts expect a growth of 7.4 percent to 119.7 billion US dollars.
“We expect very solid growth in demand year-on-year. But we also forecast that we will miss out on demand by more than $ 6 billion, ”said Cook.
Stocks of the California, US-based company, which were up nearly 15 percent this year, plummeted 5 percent on Thursday in expanded trading. The slump in Apple stock could make Microsoft Corp the most valuable company in the world after Microsoft stocks soared on its cloud computing business.
Apple’s results were mixed for a fourth quarter of fiscal year that was seen as a lull before the year-end high-selling holidays.
According to Refinitiv’s IBES data, fiscal fourth quarter revenue and earnings were $ 83.4 billion and $ 1.24 per share, compared with analyst estimates of $ 84.8 billion and $ 1.24, respectively US dollars per share.
The results were a rocky end to a fiscal year of above-expected sales, led by the iPhone 12 models and strong sales of Mac computers and iPads for working and learning from home during the pandemic.
Apple announced in July that chip restrictions would hit its iPhone and iPad lines for the first time in the fourth quarter.
Apple released its results shortly after retailer Amazon.com forecast sales for the Christmas quarter well below Wall Street’s expectations, citing in part on labor shortages and global supply chain problems.
Missing
Apple fell short of expectations in two major categories. Apple said fourth-quarter iPhone sales were $ 38.9 billion, which was below the estimate of $ 41.5 billion, according to Refinitiv data.
Cook said chips made with older technology continue to be the main restriction on supply. He said Apple isn’t sure yet if the bottlenecks will subside after the Christmas shopping season.
“Most of what we design is leading [chip manufacturing] Nodes, but all products also contain some legacy Node components. And thus [shortage] continues in [fiscal] Q1 and we’ll see how it looks beyond that. It’s very difficult to call, ”Cook told Reuters.
The company’s accessories segment, which includes rapidly growing categories like its AirPods wireless headphones, came in at $ 8.8 billion, half a billion dollars less than analyst expectations of $ 9.3 billion, according to Refinitiv- Data.
Other segments did better. Sales of iPads and Macs were $ 8.3 billion and $ 9.2 billion, respectively, according to Refinitiv data, compared to analyst estimates of $ 7.2 billion and $ 9.2 billion, respectively.
The company’s services segment – which includes the App Store business – had sales of $ 18.3 billion, up 26 percent compared to analysts’ expectations of $ 17.6 billion. Cook told Reuters News that Apple now has 745 million paying subscribers to its platform, up from 700 million it announced a quarter ago.
Other bright spots in the company’s results were sales in China, which rose 83 percent to $ 14.6 billion.
The company said it returned $ 24 billion to shareholders in the quarter.
