Apple Stock Earnings News: AAPL adds 2% on earnings beat, buyback policy

Apple (AAPL) stock strode 2.2% higher afterhours to $169.51 after the world's largest publically-traded corporation beat the Wall Street consensus on top and bottom lines for the first quarter. The consumer electronics maker reported earnings per share of $1.52 on $94.82 billion in revenue. The revenue figure was a whole $2 billion ahead of consensus, and the EPS figure beat by 9 cents.

Apple earnings news: $90 billion buybacks always help

CEO Tim Cook was excited about iPhone revenue, which came in at $51.3 billion or 54% of the quarter's total. Strong demand for the iPhone 14, Pro and Max models buffeted the segment, but Mac and iPad products were less successful. Mac revenue of $7.2 billion dropped a surprising 31% YoY. Cook ascribed this pullback to customer interest in the M1 rather than the pricier M2 models, which is Apple's leading in-house processor. iPad revenue of $6.7 billion dropped nearly 13% YoY as well.

While revenue overall fell 2.5% YoY, Tim Cook talked endlessly about his belief that global growth will pick up for the company with the emergence of India on the world stage. Cook said loads of Indians would enter the middle class this decade and next and that Apple was taking the growth market seriously.

One positive segement was services, which saw sales increase 5.5% YoY. Subscriptions rose by 150 million YoY to 975 million paid subscriptions. Revenue in China fell 3% YoY due to complications from covid lockdowns. Wearables, Home and Accessories segment revenue was flat.

The board raised Apple's dividend by more than 4% to $0.24 per quarter, but more importantly announced a new $90 billion share buyback program. The buybacks amount to 3.4% of Apple's market cap.

Apple stock forecast

If Apple stock can break above $170 following this earnings release, expect bulls to push to either $176 or $179. The first was the pinnacle of price action back in August 2022, while the higher level comes from the swing high in March of last year. Any sell-off will likely see AAPL find support at the 21-day moving average, now at $165.50. Below there we find little support until the $150 to $156 demand zone.