Apple Inc
AAPLQ2 2013 Earnings Call Transcript
In its most recently published update, Chitika found that iPad accounted for 82% of all North American tablet-led traffic in March. Interest in apps remained very strong in the March quarter, with over 800 apps downloaded per second, and year-over-year iOS app revenue more than doubling in the quarter. Since launching iCloud just 18 months ago, we now have 300 million people using it every day. We will continue to invest in the ecosystem and have some great new features and capabilities in the pipeline.
I'd now like to turn to the Apple Retail Stores. Revenue for the quarter was $5.2 billion, compared with $4.4 billion in the year ago quarter, an increase of 19%. This growth was fueled primarily by strong sales of iPhone and iPad. We ended the quarter with a total of 402 stores, including 151 outside the United States. We expect to open about 30 new stores in total in fiscal 2013, and to complete at least 20 store remodels. With an average of 401 stores open in the March quarter, average revenue per store was $13.1 million compared with $12.2 million in the year ago quarter. Retail segment income was $1.1 billion. We hosted 91 million visitors to our stores during the quarter, compared to 85 million in the year ago quarter. That translates to 17,500 visitors per store per week.
Total company gross margin was 37.5%, which was at the low-end of our guidance range of 37.5% to 38.5%. Operating expenses were $3.8 billion, and included $488 million in stock-based compensation expense. OI&E was $347 million and the tax rate for the quarter was 26%.
Turning to our cash, we ended the quarter with $144.7 billion in cash plus short-term and long-term marketable securities, compared to $137.1 billion at the end of the December quarter, a sequential increase of $7.6 billion.
Over $102 billion of our total cash was offshore at the end of the March quarter, and cash flow from operations was $12.5 billion. We paid $2.5 billion in dividends in the March quarter, and earlier this month we concluded the $1.95 billion accelerated share repurchase program that we initiated in the December quarter, resulting in cumulative retirement of over 4 million shares of Apple stock.
As Tim discussed, we are pleased to announce that we are more than doubling our return of capital program to $100 billion by the end of calendar year 2015, which translates to an average of about $30 billion per year. We will continue to return capital to shareholders through dividends, share repurchases and cash used in net-share-settle vesting RSUs. To facilitate our program, we will access the debt markets.
Let me provide more details regarding the three key elements of our plans. First, our Board has increased the share buyback authorization to $60 billion from the original $10 billion announced last year, that's a $50 billion increase. This is the largest share buyback authorization of any company in history. We are very confident in Apple's future, and believe so strongly that repurchasing our shares represents an attractive use of our capital, that we have dedicated the vast majority of the increase in our capital return program to share repurchases. We will buy shares under this authorization beginning this month. We will also continue to net-share-settle employee RSUs as they vest, and expect to use about $1 billion of cash annually to do this.
.is(':checked'))MM_swapImgRestore();%20else%20MM_swapImage('Checkbox1','','http://im.mstar.com/Im/Mbr/Form_PremCheckbox_Checked.gif',1);void($('#emailMe').attr('checked',%20!$('#emailMe').is(':checked')))){kind=small}