With companies putting up their quarterly reports these days and most of them not doing well enough as Wall Street had accepted (Google fell short by $0.11 on the previous per share price and Microsoft showed signs of maintaining its previous quarterly reports). Apple turned out with its report for the business in the third quarter that had profit written on every page and in every way.

There had been speculations from analysts that Apple would fall short of its expected revenue and the company could very well be heading off for a recession. Apple itself as always had kept the revenue generation low, as it had tipped in the earnings at around $1 per share, while analysts put it higher at about $1.10. Things however turned out much better given the down times in economy; Apple managed to pull another sock up its foot.

The company reported revenue of $7.46 billion and an overall $1.07 billion, or $1.19 per diluted share. This showed a whopping increase from revenue of $5.41 and net quarterly profit of $818 million ($0.92 per dilute share) in the same quarter last year. This accounts for an overall margin of 34.8% that fell from 36.9% in the year back quarter.

The sales for everything, from Macintosh computers to iPods, and there is no sidelining the bulk sales of iPhone, with 717,000 units compared to 270,000 in the year back quarter. As Apple’s CFO, Peter Oppenheimer commented:

We’re extremely pleased with the growth of our business and the generation of almost $5.4 billion in cash in the first three quarters of fiscal 2008. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008, we expect revenue of about $7.8 billion and earnings per diluted share of about $1.00

Apple has turned up a bit cautious despite the current success and has chalked out its next quarter sales of $7.8 billion with $1.00 for shares. Pretty cautious, isn’t it? But I guess that’s how apple works.

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