Cupertino, Calif. – Apple reported higher sales but lower profits in its fiscal second quarter ended March 30, selling more iPhones and iPads than the same quarter last year.
Apple posted quarterly revenue of $43.6 billion compared with $39.2 billion in the year-ago quarter. Profits were $9.5 billion, down from the net profit of $11.6 billion last year.
Gross margin was 37.5 percent compared to 47.4 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 66 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
Apple sold 37.4 million iPhones in the quarter, compared to 35.1 million in the year-ago quarter. Apple also sold 19.5 million iPads during the quarter, compared to 11.8 million in the year-ago quarter.
Just under 4 million Macs were sold by Apple in the quarter, compared to 4 million in the year-ago quarter.
“We are pleased to report record March quarter revenue thanks to continued strong performance of iPhone and iPad,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Our teams are hard at work on some amazing new hardware, software and services, and we are very excited about the products in our pipeline.”
“Our cash generation remains very strong, with $12.5 billion in cash flow from operations during the quarter and an ending cash balance of $145 billion,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO.
Apple also announced that its board has authorized a significant increase to the company’s program to return capital to shareholders. Apple expects to utilize a total of $100 billion of cash under the expanded program by the end of calendar 2015. This represents a $55 billion increase to the program announced last year and translates to an average rate of $30 billion per year from the time of the first dividend payment in August 2012 through December 2015.
