Live blog: Apple’s fiscal year Q1 2017 earnings call

Apple just announced its earnings for Q1 2017, reporting profits of $17.89 billion on revenues of $78.4 billion. The company sold 78.3 million iPhones, 13 million iPads, and 5.3 million Macs. Next on today’s schedule is Apple’s quarterly earnings call, which will kick-off at 2PM PT/5PM and we’ll have live coverage right here.

This earnings call is an especially important one for Apple as it marks the company’s return to growth after consecutive quarters of decline. Following the release of earnings earlier this hour, AAPL is up nearly 3 percent in after-hours trading.

As usual, we’ll have live coverage of Apple’s earnings call in this post. The call will begin at 2PM ET/5PM PT, with Tim Cook will likely speaking first, followed by CFO Luca Maestri. A question and answer session will round out the call.

Check out all of the details from the call below:

• Full coverage of the earnings report is here.
• You can listen to the call live on Apple’s investor relations site, but we’ll put all the highlights here.
• Here we go…
• Tim Cook: Highest quarterly revenue in Apple history, all-time revenue for iPhone, Apple Watch, Services, and Mac. Record earnings per share.
• iPhone 7 most popular model, but iPhone 7 Plus best performing ‘Plus’ model, demand outstripped supply until January.
• iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus “empowering” users to be productive and creative
• $7.2 billion in revenue from Services, up 18 percent year-over-year.
• App Store revenue broke record, $3 billion in December sales alone; best month ever
• $60 billion earned by developer community; $20 billion in 2016 alone
• Music revenue grew for third quarter in a row
• Apple Pay users tripled in past year, hundreds of million of dollars in purchases during December.
• Transaction volume up over 500 percent
• Comcast adding support for Apple Pay on the Web this quarter
• Services will be size of Fortune 100 company this year; goal is to double in next four years.
• Highest quarterly revenue from Mac ever, vast majority of first-time buyers from Windows
• Apple Watch best quarter ever, both with units and revenues, “holiday demand so strong we couldn’t make enough.”
• 1 million CarPlay users now, growing rapidly.
• HomeKit most secure platform for automating homes
• Tim describing his daily HomeKit ritual…
• Enterprise: Cisco + Apple partnership allowing companies to vastly improve mobile devices for companies.
• Later this Spring, SAP rolling out kit to developers to make iOS cloud apps.
• Tim Cook thanks customers, developers employees.
• Luca Maestri: Reiterating numbers and record numbers.
• “Very challenged foreign exchange environment”
• Greater China sector down 12% in quarter, but mainland revenue stable
• Benefit of 14th week offset by channel inventory growth, earlier iPhone 7 launch, stronger U.S. dollar, and year-ago revenue included 1-off $584 million patent infringement payment.
• Supply/demand imbalance for several products throughout the entire year.
• iPad channel inventory lowered this quarter as opposed to increase in year-ago quarter. Reduced by about 700k units.
• Stronger iPhone growth in Brazil, Turkey, Russia, Central & Eastern Europe, and Vietnam than other countries.
• ASP to $695 from $619 in Q1 due to stronger iPhone 7 Plus demand.
• App Store revenue outpaces industry overall, double revenue of Google Play.
• $15 billion returned to investors in Q1.
• $201 billion of $250 billion capital return program completed, more detailed update coming this Spring.
• Looking to next quarter: Revenue between $51.5 billion and $53.5 billion, gross margin between 38 and 39 percent, between $6.5 and $6.6 billion in profit.
• Time for Q&A…
• Q: Potential for access to $200 billion in cash currently kept overseas, any plans for that money? Original content?
• Cook: Optimistic for tax reform this year, people in both parties favor repatriation. Tax reform is good for country and Apple. ‘Wait and see’ before planning spending, but always looking for acquisitions of companies of all sizes.
  • “We had more things planned for it but it’s come a long way in a year… it gives us a clear platform to build off it… there are a number of third party services that are a part of it where we participate economically in that by offering our platform and selling and distributing”
  • Original content rolling out through Apple Music throughout the year, ‘dipped toe in water’ thus far, thinking about more.
  • More things planned for Apple TV in the future.
  • Expect things to accelerate with the sort of cable bundle breaking down…
• Q: Services growth due to bigger install base or increased monetization on a per-device basis?
• Maestri: Number of people transacting on App Store and iTunes increasing by double digits, but people willing to spend more over time.
• Q: What’s driving Services growth up 2x in four years like you predict?
• Maestri: App Store currently seeing significant growth, expected to be ‘significant driver’ in the future, specifically in China.
  • Apple Music expected to help bring music business back to growth. Very good success with exclusive content.
  • iCloud storage business also growing.
  • Growth in new markets strong due to acceptance of new payments types, making it easier for customers to take advantage of services.
• Q: How did India perform? Plans for 2017 in India?
• Cook: Despite the demonization move in India that created lots of economic pressure, all-time record revenue results. Demonization has not worked its way through yet, but still having some overhang and in the long-run its a great move.
  • In discussions on a number of things, including retail stores. Plan to invest significantly in the country.
• Q: Rate of switchers in other countries for iPhone?
• Cook: Exceptional quarter for iPhone despite not judging iPhone 7 Plus demand well.
  • Absolute number of upgrades is highest ever seen, switcher number highest in any quarter.
  • Upgrade rate similar to last year, but plagued by supply constraint.
• Q: Are iPhone upgrade rates worsening when considering 14th-week?
• Maestri: Look at geographical performance and most countries grew iPhone units grew by double digits.
  • Strong dollar “obviously doesn’t up” upgrade rates around the world because of price increases it causes.
• Q: Back in April 2012, Cook said he hated litigation but recently decided to start battle with Qualcomm, comment?
• Cook: I still feel the same way, I don’t like litigation and view it as a last resort. We didn’t see another way forward, they were insisting on charging royals on tech they had nothing to do with. We were in a situation where the more we innovated with new features, the more money Qualcomm would collect for no reason and the more expensive it would be for us to innovate.
  • It’s like buying a sofa and charging someone a different price depending on the size of the house it goes through.
  • We don’t believe it will pass in the courts.
  • In terms of where it goes, we’ll see. I don’t like litigation and if there’s another, that would be great. But at this point, I don’t see it. I fully expect for it to take some time, but in the end I think common sense will prevail and the courts will see it for what it is.
• Q: Looked like iPad was about to turn positive, but ASP and perforce down vs expectations?
• Cook: We had a 1.6 million unit swing on channel inventory between the years. On top of that, ASP affected by launch of 12.9-inch iPad Pro in year-ago quarter. Additionally, we under-called the number of iPads that would be in demand, causing a shortage issue.
  • We have exciting things coming, I still feel optimize about where we can take the product.
  • I’m not projecting to get out of shortage issue this quarter, but very bullish beyond 90-day clock.
• Q: Beyond form factor, what functional changes coming to iPhone?
• Cook: iPhone becomes more important to users every year. I talked about home automation, but I could have talked about Health or CarPlay. Enterprise use is growing. When I look at all of these things, we’ve got exciting things in the pipeline and I feel really good about it.