John you mean AAPL's 0.35 1Q98 (12/31/97) will be bettered - right ?
Apple, in the quarter ending December, had brought
in $45 million in earnings on
revenues of $1.575 billion.
The Red Herring Online sat down with Fred
Anderson, Apple's chief financial officer, to go over
the results and see what laid the groundwork for this
bracing good news....
The Herring:
I'm sure you probably asked Steve Jobs this same
question when he asked you and your team to work
overtime on the holidays: what was the thinking in
getting the first quarter 1998 numbers ready for
Macworld?
Anderson:
We all knew we were trying to work towards
profitability this quarter. Steve said to me a couple
months ago, "Gee, Fred, if we know we're going to
be profitable, I'd sure like to be in a position to
share that at the Macworld San Francisco keynote."
And I said, "Well, Steve ... I'm not going to predict
unless I know. So if you're serious about this, I'll
schedule my entire team to work between
Christmas and New Year's all the way up to your
keynote speech. Even though we won't have all the
analysis done, we'll know where we are."
The Herring:
The fourth quarter of 1996 was the last quarter
where you reported a profit.
Anderson:
Yes, but the majority of that profit was a takeback
on a restructuring charge -- It was something we
had to do based on accounting rules, but it just
wasn't driven by operations. The last good quality
earnings quarter was the fourth quarter of 1995.
The Herring:
The first quarter has traditionally been a strong
earnings quarter for Apple.
Anderson:
Yes, however, Apple's not as big in the consumer
business as it was two or three years ago. Our
strongest quarter is our quarter ended September,
the education quarters.
Please note CFO Anderson is quoted on specific questions but you can
infer he is optimistic of earnings growth. |
