Apple Shareholders: iRich

Apple CEO Steve Jobs no longer need reserve his use of the exclamatory “boom” to product demos; It would be an equally effective interjection for company earnings announcements, which have lately been remarkably strong.

After market close today, the company said that profits surged 67% in its fiscal fourth quarter–a period during which it sold more than 1 million iPhones, 10 million iPods, and a record 2 million Mac computers. The results blew the doors off Wall Street’s expectations, and spiked Apple shares some 7% in after-hours trading.

It was a very strong quarter. So strong, in fact, that Apple, which has traditionally been extremely cautious with its forward-looking guidance, is predicting more of the same for the holidays. Looking forward, the company forecast that it would earn $1.42 a share on $9.2 billion in sales in the Christmas quarter.

” … We are very confident in our strategy and the team here at Apple has been working incredibly hard for a number of years and things are just really coming together quite well for us and I couldn’t be happier,” Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer explained during a conference call to discuss the company’s earnings. “Apple is shipping the best products that we have ever made in our history. We just eclipsed the record that we set for Mac sales last quarter by 400,000. iPod sales accelerated after the transition and we’ll be shipping the best iPods that we’ve ever made, and the iPhone is doing really, really well. So we’re quite confident in the business and we’ve exited the September quarter with a lot of momentum.”