Earnings

(RTTNews) - Apple Inc. (AAPL) said Monday after the markets closed that its second quarter profit rose 33% from last year, driven by strong sales of iPhone and Mac as well as all-time record performance of the App Store.

The company's quarterly earnings per share also breezed past Wall Street expectations as did its quarterly sales.

"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."

Apple also said that its Board of Directors has authorized an increase of more than 50% 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.

The company's board has increased its stock buyback authorization to $140 billion from the $90 billion level announced last year. The board has also hiked the company's quarterly dividend by 11% to $0.52 per share, payable on May 14 to shareholders of record on May 11.

Apple shares are currently gaining 1.36% in after hours trading after closing the day's regular trading session at $132.65, up $2.37 or 1.82%. On February 24, the company's shares hit a 52-week high of $133.60. Apple replaced AT&T Inc. (T) in the Dow Jones Industrial Average after the close of trading on March 18.

Apple sold 61.2 million iPhones in the second quarter, up 40% from 43.7 million in the same quarter last year. The company in September unveiled two new bigger smartphones, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, which went on sale on September 19 with record breaking performance.

The company sold 4.56 million Macs in the quarter, up 10% from 4.14 million in the prior year quarter.

However, iPad sales for the second quarter fell 23% to 12.6 million units from 16.4 million units a year earlier. In October, Apple unveiled the next iteration of its tablets-- iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3, with both sporting Touch ID fingerprint sensor found on the iPhone.

For the second quarter, the company's America revenue surged 19% year-over-year to $21.3 billion and Europe revenue increased 12% to $12.2 billion, but its Greater China revenue jumped 71% to $16.8 billion. Japan revenue fell 15%, while rest of Asia-Pacific revenue increased 48% from a year earlier.

Apple's new Apple Pay service became available in the US from October 20. Apple Pay supports credit and debit cards from the three major payment networks, American Express, MasterCard and Visa, issued by the top US banks.

The company's latest product, Apple Watch, is off to a flying start. Nearly one million customers in the U.S. reportdly placed order for an Apple Watch on the first day the smartwatch was available for sale. Pre-orders for Apple Watch started on April 10, although the shipping began only on April 24.

Apple Watch comes in three collections, Apple Watch Sport, Apple Watch in stainless steel, and the luxury Apple Watch Edition in 18 carat gold. The pricing for Sport model starts at $349 and $399, while the mid-range model is priced at $549 to $1,099 and the luxury edition is priced at an exorbitant $10,000. The device requires to be paired with an iPhone 5 or above for use.

For the second quarter ended March 28, 2015, the Cupertino, California-based computing and electronics company reported net income of $13.6 billion or $2.33 per share, compared to $10.2 billion or $1.66 per share for the year-ago quarter.

On average, 40 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to earn $2.16 per share for the second quarter.

This marks the fifth straight quarter that the company has reported year-over-year profit increase following four quarters of profit declines.

Gross margin for the quarter improved to 40.8% from 39.3 in the prior year quarter.

Net sales for the second quarter rose 27% to $58.01 billion from $45.65 billion in the same quarter last year. Thirty-six analysts had a consensus revenue estimate of $56.06 billion for the second quarter. International sales accounted for 69% of the quarter's revenue.

Looking forward, the company forecasts third quarter revenue of $46 billion to $48 billion. Analysts currently expect the company to post revenue of $47.06 billion for the third quarter.

Gross margin for the third quarter is expected to be 38.5% to 39.5%.