Apple beats on Q4 earnings thanks to price hikes, stock still falls 4% after-hours

Despite a beat on its Q4 quarterly earnings, Apple shares still managed to take a beating Thursday.

Shares are down 4+ percent in after-hours trading after the company released its Q4 quarterly earnings report, detailing $62.90 billion in revenue beating analyst expectations of $61.57 billion, with earnings per share hitting $2.91 beating an expected $2.78 EPS. The results represent a 20 percent year-over-year growth in revenues at the company.

The reason for the after-hours drop? Apple forecasted weaker than expected earnings for the holiday quarter. While analysts were expecting revenue guidance to hit $93 million, Apple forecasts between $89M and $93M with a midpoint of $91 million according to Reuters.

Apple shipped 46.89 million iPhones this quarter with unit sales staying flat but revenue jumping 29 percent, a result of Apple’s strategy this past year to hike prices of their most high-end devices. The company shipped 9.7 million iPads (a 6 percent decrease YoY with a 15 percent revenue decrease) and 5.3 million Macs (a 2 percent decrease YoY). Revenue on “Other Products” which includes Apple Watch, Apple TV, HomePod, AirPods and Beats headphones climbed 31 percent.

Beyond wrenching more money from users with hardware upgrades, Apple has continued the trend of pulling more revenue from user services like Apple Music, Apple Care and iCloud. The company reported that its Services division reached “an all-time-high of $10 billion in revenue” (well, actually $9.98 billion), climbing 17 percent year-over-year. That’s a slowdown in growth rates from last quarter where Services revenue climbed 31 percent year-over-year, though Apple notes this quarter’s numbers included a one-time adjustment $640 million.

Among the big geographical segments there was pretty unified growth in revenues. The Americas region jumped 19 percent, Europe popped 18 percent and Greater China went up 16 percent year-over year. Apple saw more substantial growth in Japan (34 percent).

It’s been a rough past few weeks for the Nasdaq, tech stocks have been floundering though Apple has weathered the storm far better than most on the heels of several new hardware announcements. Earlier this week, the company introduced new models of the iPad Pro, MacBook Air and Mac Mini at an event in New York. This comes on the heels of the release of three new iPhone models and a redesign of the Apple Watch.

Over the past several months, the company has been bumping the prices of its newest devices promoting a broader spread between their older releases and newest devices. The iPhone XS Max starts at $1,099, the Apple Watch Series 4 starts at $399, the new iPad Pro starts at $799 and the new MacBook Air starts at $1,199.

We’ll have more details later this afternoon during the company’s investor call.