Apple -- AAPL -- Finally Increases Its Dividend -- Racial Equity And Justice Initiative Reason For Apple's Incredible Results -- January 27, 2021

New dividend: 20.5 cents/share, payable February 8, 2021, to holders of record February 11, 2021 (sic). I doubt the "pay date" is after the "record date" but with Apple it appears anything is possible. [Later: as surmised, it was a typo at the source. The NASDAQ.com site has it correct: the date of record is February 8, 2021, with a pay date on February 11, 2021.

Tim Cook cites "Racial Equity and Justice Initiative" as key to record results. As well as ... nope, it was just due to "racial equity and justice," apparently something Apple was not doing under Steve Jobs. 

I could be wrong, but ....

• revenue: $111.44 billion vs $103.12 billion ... if this is the pandemic, long live the pandemic ...
• quarterly profit of $28.8 billion ... if this is the pandemic, long live the pandemic ... 
  
• EPS: $1.68 vs $1.42 ... if this is the pandemic, long live the pandemic ....
• iPhone revenue: $64.68 billion vs $60.33 billion ... if this is the pandemic, long live the pandemic ...
• service revenue: $15.76 billion vs $14.89 billion ... if this is the pandemic, long live the pandemic ...

The stock was down 1% following the announcement. LOL. GameStop (GME) was up 140%. [Later: AAPL fell another two to three percent after hours.]

Link here.

I was wrong. I thought AAPL would move $15 dollars after the announcement. I just didn't know which direction. 

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.   

With regard to the quarterly revenue results they had to re-draw the graph, extend the "y" axis. LOL. Apparently this is only the second time in history that any company has reported quarterly revenues in excess of $100 million, and that was Walmart. More remarkable was the fact that Apple did this with margins approaching 40%.

MacRumors link here. Data points:

• gross margin: 39.8% compared to 38.4% a year ago (of all the numbers, this is the most important number after the "big" numbers
• international sales: 64% of total revenue
  

I can't wait to read the social media comments from Samsung employees and Apple haters. LOL. Typical comments:

• no excuse not to fix the bugs in their software
• this is what happens when you don't include a phone charger

Unless I missed it, MacRumors failed to mention the importance of racial equity and justice initiative. 

More links as Bloomberg, Forbes, Reuters catch up. I'm mostly interested in more information on how the racial equity and justice initiative pushed Apple's recover revenue to over $110 billion. 

Adjectives and adverbs used in headlines:

• Apple reports record-breaking 1Q21 earnings ...
• Apple demolished 1Q21 earnings estimates ...
• Apple smashes 1Q21 earnings forecast on surging China sales ...
• Apple's iPhone 12 delivered a record $111.4 billion quarter ...
• A ridiculously good quarter ...
• An extraordinary good quarter ...
• The bar was set high ... jumped over the bar ...
  

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Fast Money On CNBC

The panelists blamed this all on GameStock. That may be but the actual turn in the market happened immediately after the Fed's chairman Jay Powell spoke. 

Let's see how long it takes any of the panelists to mention Jay Powell and the Fed.

At eight minutes into the program, the Fed has not been mentioned. 

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. 

First outside analyst: "buying opportunity."

Twenty-two minutes into "Fast Money": still no word about Jay Powell. The host came close mentioning at twenty one minutes into the program that the ten-year Treasury actually dropped today, coming closer to 1% again.

Cheap money. 

I didn't see the full two hours of "Fast Money" today (the second hour due to the fact Jim Cramer is on vacation) so it's possible Jay Powell's comments were mentioned but if so, I missed it.

During broadcast it was mentioned that the server driving GME banned the Reddit stream that was driving GME down but not for "financial comments" but due to "hate speech." Shortly after that ban was announced, GME dropped 25%.