Strong iPhone 6 sales power Apple's earnings with a net profit of $13.6 billion

Stronger than expected iPhone sales have bolstered Apple's strong second quarter earnings. The company announced earnings of $13.6 billion, or $2.33 per share, in its second quarter, up by 33 percent from the same time last year. Apple's revenue rose to $58 billion, compared with $45.6 billion a year ago.

The growth was fueled by record second quarter sales of iPhone and Mac and all-time record performance of the App Store. Apple sold 61.6 million iPhones for the quarter. Introduced last year, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have been the biggest departures to apple's smartphone line.

“We are thrilled by the continued strength of iPhone, Mac and the App Store, which drove our best March quarter results ever,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We’re seeing a higher rate of people switching to iPhone than we’ve experienced in previous cycles, and we’re off to an exciting start to the June quarter with the launch of Apple Watch.” 

“The tremendous customer demand for our products and services in the March quarter drove revenue growth of 27 percent and EPS growth of 40 percent,” said Luca Maestri, Apple’s CFO. “Cash flow from operations was also outstanding at $19.1 billion.”

Apple also announced that its Board of Directors has authorized an increase of more than 50 percent to the Company’s program to return capital to shareholders. Under the expanded program, Apple plans to utilize a cumulative total of $200 billion of cash by the end of March 2017.

As part of the revised program, the Board has increased its share repurchase authorization to $140 billion from the $90 billion level announced last year. In addition, the Company expects to continue to net-share-settle vesting restricted stock units.

The Board has also approved an increase of 11 percent to the Company’s quarterly dividend, and has declared a dividend of $.52 per share, payable on May 14, 2015 to shareholders of record as of the close of business on May 11, 2015.

“We believe Apple has a bright future ahead, and the unprecedented size of our capital return program reflects that strong confidence,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “While most of our program will focus on buying back shares, we know that the dividend is very important to many of our investors, so we’re raising it for the third time in less than three years.”