Apple: The Worst is Over

Despite the March plunge, Apple shares are 46.4% up from one year ago.

As a long-time Apple user and investor, your humble blogger has always taken a keen interest in its earnings reports. Today Apple reported quarterly sales and earnings of $53.3 billion and $11.25 billion, respectively. both better than recent forecasts lowered due to the pandemic.[bold added]

Apple’s services and wearables business proved to be the difference maker for the company in the March period, underscoring the value of its strategic shift from selling more devices to selling more services and accessories across those devices. Those businesses, which include App Store sales and AirPods wireless earbuds, surged 18% to $19.63 billion. Meanwhile, sales of the company’s legacy products—the iPhone, iPad and Mac—fell nearly 7% to $38.68 billion.

The 2020 new-iPhone's delays could have been much worse, so today's announcement counted as good news:

Apple is pushing production of this year’s flagship iPhones back by a month, which could delay sales of those devices from September until October or later. It also is cutting production volume for the four new models by about 20% as the coronavirus weakens consumer demand.

Apple's China operations have recovered:

Mr. Cook said that Apple’s operations team and suppliers have returned to work and production reached traditional levels by the end of March.

The information coming from China's government has been untrustworthy, but we do trust Tim Apple.

China has been 2-3 months ahead of the U.S. in battling COVID-19 outbreaks. If the timeline is replicated, we should be underway to recovery in June.

Headline - Bloomberg: Tim Cook Says Austria, Australia Apple Stores to Reopen in 1 to 2 Weeks

Perth Apple Store (Business Insider)

Tim Cook said that the company plans to reopen its retail stores in Austria and Australia beginning in the next one to two weeks.

Apple has one store in Austria and more than 20 in Australia.

Cook...said that he believes that “just a few, not a large number” of stores in the U.S. will re-open in the first half of May.