Apple sales rise 6%, company seeing early iPhone 16 demand

Apple's fiscal fourth-quarter results beat Wall Street expectations for revenue and earnings per share, but net income slumped after the company paid a one-time charge as part of a tax decision in Europe.

Apple shares fell as much as 2% in extended trading on Thursday.  

Here's how the iPhone maker did versus LSEG consensus estimates for the quarter ending Sept. 28:  

Overall iPhone revenue grew 6%, in the first sign of how the iPhone 16 is faring in the market. Apple's newest devices came out Sept. 20, giving Apple about a week of new product sales in the quarter. It's still Apple's most important product, accounting for nearly 49% of the company's overall sales.  

Sales of the iPhone 15 were "stronger than 14 in the year-ago quarter, and 16 was stronger than 15," Apple CEO Tim Cook told CNBC's Steve Kovach.  

Cook said the company was looking forward to Apple Intelligence, the AI system for iPhones and Macs that started to roll out this week as part of the iOS 18.1 update.  

"We're getting great feedback from customers and developers already and a really early stat, which is only three days worth of data: Users are adopting iOS 18.1 at twice the rate that they adopted 17.1 in the year-ago quarter," Cook said. 

Apple said on a call with analysts that it expects "low to mid-single digit" sales growth during the December quarter. It also signaled that it expects services growth to be about the same as its growth rate for the past year, which was 12.87%.

Apple reported $14.73 billion, or 97 cents per share, in net income during the quarter, versus $22.96 billion, or $1.47 per share, in the year-ago period. Apple's adjusted earnings per share, after removing the one-time tax charge, increased 12% on an annual basis.  

Revenue rose