Apple’s Mixed Q1 2013: Revenue Up 17.7% to $54.5B, $13.1B In Profit, Earnings Of $13.81/Share

Here we go: Apple has just released its fiscal Q1 2013 financials, and they’re a sight to behold. Apple reported $54.5 billion in revenue (up 17.7% from the year-ago quarter), $13.1 billion in profit (flat from the year-ago quarter), and earnings of $13.81 per share.

Investors, analysts, and pundits of all stripes were expecting the Cupertino company to put up some crazy numbers — after all, the year-ago quarter was the one where Apple reported an astonishing $46.3 billion in revenue, along with quarterly profits of $13.06 billion. This time around the general Wall Street consensus (as per Bloomberg) was that Apple would report earnings of $13.55 per share on revenues of $54.9 billion. Apple handily beat the earnings expectations, but couldn’t quite beat revenue estimates.

“We’re thrilled with record revenue of over $54 billion and sales of over 75 million iOS devices in a single quarter,” CEO Tim Cook noted in the earnings release. “We’re very confident in our product pipeline as we continue to focus on innovation and making the best products in the world.”

As you would expect, Apple’s strong financial performance this time around had a lot to do with the company’s booming hardware business. Shortly before Apple’s fiscal Q1 officially kicked off, the company unleashed a slew of upgrades and new additions to its product portfolio. The timing really couldn’t have been better — putting the iPhone 5 aside for a moment, the introduction of the iPad mini (not to mention some attractively refreshed iPods and MacBooks) meant that Apple was a force to be reckoned with once the holiday buying frenzy kicked off in earnest.

We’ve gotten some limited glimpses at Apple’s hardware sales over these past few weeks thanks to some related earnings releases — during Verizon’s recent earnings call, it was revealed that nearly half of the 6.4 million iPhones it sold this past quarter were iPhone 5s — but Apple has finally revealed some more solid figures. Jordan and Darrell have some more nuanced takes on Apple’s iDevice and Mac sales performance for this quarter, so here’s the short version: Apple sold 12.7 million iPods, 47.8 million iPhones, and 22.9 million iPads.

Despite Apple’s generally strong financial performance this past year, the company’s stock price has been on a bit of a rollercoaster ride. After starting off the calendar year hovering in the low $400 range, Apple’s stock price eventually soared to $705 in mid-September 2012 before taking a downward trajectory and ultimately dipping below $500/share earlier this month. Perhaps one of the biggest questions on people’s minds in the days leading up to this release was whether or not Apple would be able to coax its stock back upward with a reasonably strong quarterly report. The long-term effects remain to be seen but at time of writing, Apple’s stock is down over 5% from its closing position in after-hours trading: