Supply chain issues caused Apple to lose US$6 billion (approximately Rs 448.9 billion) in sales in the fourth fiscal quarter, which was lower than Wall Street’s expectations. CEO Tim Cook said that in the current holiday sales quarter, the impact will be more serious. Cook told Reuters on Thursday that “supply restrictions were greater than expected” for the quarter ended September 25, as well as the pandemic-related manufacturing disruption in Southeast Asia.

Cook said that although Apple saw “significant improvement” in these Southeast Asian factories in late October, chip shortages persist and are now affecting “most of our products.” Cook said: “We are doing everything we can to get more (chips) and everything we can do in operations to make sure we move as fast as possible.” Cook said the company expects to achieve year-on-year growth in the quarter ending in December.

Analysts expect an increase of 7.4% to reach 119.7 billion U.S. dollars (approximately 895.4 billion rupees). “We expect demand to grow very steadily year by year. But we also predict that the demand gap will exceed $6 billion,” Cook said. The Cupertino, California-based company has gained nearly 15% this year, and its shares fell 3.4% in after-hours trading on Thursday. After Microsoft’s stock price rose due to the strong cloud computing business, the decline may make Microsoft the world’s most valuable company. Apple’s fourth-quarter results were mixed, and it was seen as a quiet period before the year-end high sales holiday.

Apple said that its fourth-quarter revenue and profit were US$83.4 billion (approximately Rs 6,237.39 billion) and US$1.24 (approximately Rs 9.2 billion) per share, while analysts estimated that it was US$84.8 billion (approximately Rs 6,3424.1 billion). ) And according to Refinitiv’s IBES data, $1.24 per share. As a result, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the fiscal year of higher-than-expected sales driven by strong sales of iPhone 12 models and Mac computers and iPads for working and studying at home ended in a difficult way.

Apple told investors in July that chip restrictions will begin to affect its iPhone and iPad product lines for the first time in the fourth quarter. Shortly after retailer Amazon predicted that sales in the holiday quarter were well below Wall Street expectations, Apple announced its results, partly due to labor shortages and global supply chain issues.

Apple “managed to solve these problems well, but did not escape unscathed. The prolonged duration of these problems will cause trouble, especially because the market is ruthless about Apple’s performance,” Sophie Lund-Yates said. . Analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.

News Source : Gadgets 360