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Apple Inc.
9/3/2018
Good day, and welcome to the Apple Incorporated fourth quarter fiscal year 2018 earnings conference call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the call over to Nancy Paxton, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good afternoon, and thanks to everyone for joining us. Speaking first today is Apple CEO Tim Cook, and he'll be followed by CFO Luca Maestri. After that, we'll open the call to questions from analysts. Please note that some of the information you'll hear during our discussion today will consist of forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, those regarding revenue, gross margin, operating expenses, other income and expense, taxes, capital allocation, and future business outlook. Actual results or trends could differ materially from our forecast. For more information, please refer to the risk factors discussed in Apple's most recently filed periodic reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q, and the Form 8-K filed with the SEC today along with the associated press release. Apple assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements or information which speak as of their respective dates. I'd now like to turn the call over to Tim for introductory remarks.
Thank you, Nancy. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us. I just got back from Brooklyn where we marked our fourth major launch of the end of the year. In addition to being a great time, it put an exclamation point at the end of a remarkable fiscal 2018. This year, we shipped our 2 billionth iOS device, celebrated the 10th anniversary of the App Store, and achieved the strongest revenue and earnings in Apple's history. In fiscal year 18, our revenue grew by $36.4 billion. That's the equivalent of a Fortune 100 company in a single year. And we're capping all that off with our best September quarter ever. Revenue was $62.9 billion, ahead of our expectation. That's an increase of 20% over last year and our highest growth rate in three years. We also generated record Q4 earnings with 41% year-over-year growth in EPFs. Record results from iPhone, services and wearables drove our momentum and we produced strong double-digit revenue growth in all of our geographic segments. It was a big year and a big quarter for iPhone. Q4 revenue was up 29% over last year, an increase of over $8 billion to a new September quarter record fueled by continued momentum for iPhone 8, 8 Plus and 10. and the very successful launch of iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max. These latest devices are our most advanced iPhones ever with the industry's first 7 nanometer A12 Bionic chip with an Apple-designed 8-core neural engine capable of executing an astounding 5 trillion operations per second. The A12 Bionic is many years in the making and a huge technological leap forward. It sets the iPhone experience far apart from the competition using real-time machine learning to transform the way we experience photos, gaming, augmented reality and more. It makes full use of the dual camera system that shoots portrait mode photos with smart HDR and dynamic depth of field and face ID is even faster. The response has been powerful. As one reviewer put it, iPhone XS and XS Max are the perfect blend of design and craftsmanship as well as seamlessly intuitive user experience. We're not done yet. Just last week, we began shipping iPhone XR, bringing the latest iPhone breakthroughs to even more users. With an all-screen glass and aluminum design and the most advanced LCD in a smartphone, the product reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. iOS 12 has gotten off to an incredible start. It's been installed on more systems in its first month than any version of iOS ever. iOS 12 is delivering system-wide performance enhancements, Siri shortcuts, and new tools to help people reduce interruptions and manage screen time for themselves and their kids. Siri shortcuts in particular is already deeply integrated with some of the most popular apps out there. Whether you're tracking your workouts or rushing to catch a flight, you can be sure all of your most relevant apps are working together with Siri in the driver's seat. iOS 12 also features ARKit 2, a major upgrade to our augmented reality engine. ARKit 2 makes possible simultaneous multi-user experiences and real-world object incorporation. Our developer community is really running with this technology. From gaming to shopping, we're seeing great new use cases emerge. iOS devices deliver the best AR experiences of any products in the market today, and with the announcement of our new iPad Pro this week, we've made that gap even wider. More powerful than the vast majority of PC laptops, the new iPad Pro is unrivaled in its versatility and performance. When paired with a beautifully refined Apple Pencil, and a new streamlined full-size smart keyboard, iPad Pro will extend its lead as the ultimate creativity and productivity device. And finally, just this week, we delivered the highly anticipated group FaceTime functionality to all FaceTime-enabled devices. For services, it was our best quarter ever with revenue of $10 billion. Excluding the impact of a favorable one-time accounting adjustment of $640 million a year ago, our services growth was 27%. We set new Q4 records in all of our geographic segments and new all-time revenue records for the App Store, cloud services, AppleCare, Apple Music, and Apple Pay. We also continue to see strong growth in paid subscriptions, reaching over $330 million in our ecosystem. I want to spotlight the exceptional performance of Apple Pay, which is by far the number one mobile contactless payment service worldwide. Transaction volume tripled year over year, and to put that into perspective, Apple Pay generated significantly more transactions than even PayPal Mobile, with over four times the growth rate. As a testament to accelerating U.S. growth, Costco completed the rollout of Apple Pay to over 500 U.S. warehouses last quarter, while Neiman Marcus is now accepting Apple Pay at over 40 stores across the country. With these additions, 71 of the top 100 merchants and 60% of all U.S. retail locations support Apple Pay. We continue to invest in our strategy to replace the wallet with the recent launch of student ID passes at several major U.S. universities. And 10 months following its launch, Apple Pay Cash is the highest rated mobile peer-to-peer service by Consumer Reports based on exceptional payment authentication and data privacy. We set an all-time quarterly record for Mac revenue thanks to strong performance in MacBook Pro and the impact of the back-to-school season. In September, we delivered macOS Mojave, bringing powerful new features to Mac like dark mode stacks in a completely redesigned Mac App Store. Considered alongside the release of iOS 12, watchOS 5, and a new tvOS, macOS Mojave tells a powerful story of the seamless integration of world-class hardware, software, and services that define the Apple ecosystem. As I mentioned at the beginning of the call, Earlier this week, we announced exciting updates to the Mac lineup. The all-new MacBook Air brings a stunning Retina display, Touch ID, the latest processors, and an even more portable design to the world's most beloved notebook. We also unveiled the biggest update ever to Mac Mini, the small yet muscular desktop that powers everything from the music and sound effects that Broadway shows to the developers who build some of the most popular apps in the App Store. The new Mac Mini boasts an amazing five times faster performance than before. With revenue growth over 50%, it was another record quarter for wearables, which includes Apple Watch, AirPods, and Beats products. With the highest customer satisfaction in the industry, Apple Watch has become an essential part of people's lives. The customer response to the Apple Watch Series 4 has been overwhelmingly positive. driven by its all-new design, larger display, faster performance, fall detection, enhanced cellular reception, and electrical heart sensor. Later this year, the ECG app will be available to Apple Watch Series 4 customers in the US, giving them the ability to take an electrocardiogram anytime, right from their wrist. And for US customers with Apple Watch Series 1 and later, watchOS will soon enable periodic checks for irregular heart rhythms that may be suggestive of AFib. These are unprecedented and potentially life-changing features showing how Apple Watch is not only an indispensable communication and fitness companion, but also an intelligent guardian for your health. More broadly, We see this as just one further example of the kind of contribution we can make in the health space and we look forward to making more in the future. We are proud to bring HomePod to new customers. I was in Spain last week as HomePod became available there and in Mexico. HomePod delivers the highest fidelity audio quality working together with an Apple Music subscription to stream over 50 million songs into any room of your home. Our retail team posted record Q4 results to conclude their biggest year ever. They are transforming our stores into places where customers come to connect, learn, and be inspired together with people from their community. Our Today at Apple sessions are a terrific example of what that looks like in practice. We hosted over 250,000 today at Apple Sessions this quarter, connecting aspiring creators with local photographers, illustrators, and other experts who can help them get the most out of their devices. Apple stores also hosted 74,000 kids at Apple Camp. The relationship Apple has with our customers is about more than just making a purchase. With the recent addition of beautiful new stores in Italy, Japan, China, and in just a few weeks, Thailand, we will have 506 stores where we can further those relationships, almost half of which are outside the United States. Before I turn the call over to Luca, I'd like to touch on two items that may not show up in our financial statement, but are just as integral to Apple's mission. and our commitment to making the world a better place. First, education. More than 5,000 schools, community colleges, and technical colleges worldwide are now using Everyone Can Code, our free coding curriculum. Ideas, creativity, and passion for technology's potential aren't limited by zip code or country, and we don't think opportunity should be either. We're also excited that educators in more than 350 schools around the world have started working with Everyone Can Create, the free collection of tools and project guides we introduced this spring designed to help unleash kids' creativity throughout their school day with the help of iPad. Next is the environment. This was a milestone year for Apple's commitment to our planet. In April, we announced that 100% of our global operations are powered by renewable energy. We also made progress in doing the same in our supply chain. And just this week, we announced that the enclosures of new products like MacBook Air and iPad Pro will be made from 100% recycled aluminum, a strong, durable and beautiful new alloy designed by Apple. This is a great example of how a commitment to do right on the issues that matter can drive once unimaginable innovation, new ways of approaching old problems and beautiful solutions that set us apart. I'd like to thank all of our employees, customers, developers and business partners for helping us deliver outstanding results across our fiscal 2018. We are headed into the holidays with our strongest product lineup ever and we could not be more bullish about Apple's future. And now Luca has more details to share with you on the September quarter. Luca? Thank you Tim.
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