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Technology Stocks : Apple Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Phillip C. Lee who wrote (7381)	1/6/1998 8:27:00 PM
From: joe caetano	Respond to of 213173

For those who might have missed this story with everything else that happened today.................................................. 03:35 PM ET 01/06/98 Apple sees profits for fiscal 1998 SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Apple Computer Inc senior vice president Mitch Mandich said the company's profitable first fiscal quarter is "not an aberration" and Apple is looking for a profitable fiscal 1998. "Q1 is not an aberration," Mandich told Reuters in a brief interview. "We think we will have a profitable fiscal 1998. We are looking for a strong year." Interim CEO Steve Jobs told the MacWorld audience that its second fiscal quarter is Apple's slowest. Mandich declined to make any projections, but said that, even if Apple loses money in Q2, Apple should conclude fiscal 1998 with a profit. "We don't understand why revenues go down in the second quarter," Mandich said. "It's difficult for us to predict." But he added that he believes that Apple should do better than recent historical trends. Apple executives also told reporters at a press conference that its first quarter profits were due to a number of factors, including "significant" improvements in gross profit margins, continued cost cutting and a stabilization of revenues. Apple said it ended the first quarter with $1.57 billion in revenues, down slightly from fourth quarter revenues of about $1.7 billion. Fred Anderson, the company's chief financial officer, said Apple's revenues are stabilizing at around $1.6 billion a quarter, but he declined to make any projections to reporters. "We are out of the business of predicting...and in the business of delivering profits," Anderson said. When asked by reporters if Apple plans any products in the booming sub-$1,000 PC market, Mandich said this market, "does have our attention as a management team," as 40 percent of consumer sales in the fourth quarter were from sub-$1,000 PCs. "We are not making a product announcement," Mandich said. The senior executives said Apple is continuing its search for a CEO, which it has been conducting since Gil Amelio was ousted by the board in July. The executives said Jobs will remain on as interim CEO until Apple finds a "world class CEO." "The search is active, it is ongoing," Mandich said, adding that the search is not as easy as the company had hoped when it was first announced. In August, Apple said it hoped to find a CEO by the end of the year. Apple executives said Jobs is currently working more than 50 hours a week, but he has made it clear that his position is "interim." Mandich told Reuters that Apple does not have a deadline under which to replace Jobs and said he has personally tried to convince Jobs to stay on permanently. "I think Steve is awesome," Mandich said. "I've told him to stay. I've tried to convince him." Mandich said Jobs also has his duties as chairman of PIXAR Animation Studios Inc and he wants to spend more time with his family. "I don't think any of us have spent much time with our families in the past few months," said Mandich.