Apple Races To Become The First Trillion-Dollar Company After Strong Q3 Earnings

The race to become the first-ever trillion-dollar company just intensified as The Cupertino giant

Apple posted its Q3 earning report—which shows a strong earning numbers and again managed to beat market estimates—with a revenue of $53.3 billion, surpassing its investor’s projection by $1 billion.

The report is the strongest third quarter for the company ever, despite the slow iPhone sales as consumers prepare for new smartphone announcements in the fall. The Cupertino, California-based company forecast fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of between $60 billion and $62 billion, which is again ahead of expectations from Wall Street — which come in at $59.47 billion. Meeting that estimate would put represent a hefty 15 percent increase over the same quarter last year.

Apple Inc. sold 41.3 million iPhones in its fiscal third quarter, just shy of analysts’ estimates for 41.6 million. On a year-over-year basis, that represents unit growth of 0.7 percent. The average sales price for the devices came in at $724, beating expectations for $699 and indicating strong demand for higher-priced models like the iPhone X.

During the call, the company revealed that it’s doing excellently well in the wearables market— it boasted about 60 percent growth in wearables device, a segment that includes the Apple Watch, AirPods, and Beats headphones. It’s likely that segment will continue to grow — the Apple Watch is growing in popularity and AirPods have become a hit, too.

And in the “services” category, which includes things like Apple Music, Apple Pay, Applecare, iCloud, iTunes, were not left untouched. The company posted a hefty $9.55 billion in revenue for this category, which is up a hefty 28 percent from the same quarter a year ago. That segment also beat out Wall Street estimates, which came in at $9.21 billion. According to Apple, the boosted revenue is due to high Apple Pay usage, and an increase in paid subscribers through the App Store.

The quarterly report comes after a market rout for major tech stocks. Silicon Valley giants Facebook and Twitter each shed 20 percent after disappointing reports last week. Shares of Apple rose 4 percent in extended trading, after the company fell right in line with analyst projections of strong upsides for the quarter that ended June 30.

Overall, the company is currently worth $935.3 billion, and stock would only need to rise about 7 percent for it to hit the 12 zeros milestone.