Apple’s retail stores continued to report strong revenues during the second quarter of fiscal 2008, and executives increased their forecast on the number of stores that will open this fiscal year. The company announced that store sales totaled $1.45 billion during the quarter, and profit was $334 million. Neither figure broke the records set in the previous quarter, which covered the holiday shopping season. However, the figures are the second-highest in the chain’s history, and represent substantial increases compared to the same quarter of 2007. The stores hosted 33.7 million visitors, the second-highest number in history behind the last holiday shopping season. CFO Peter Oppenheimer said the stores hosted 580,000 personal one-hour training sessions during the quarter. He also said the company was on-track to open about 45 stores during fiscal 2008, and “in the coming months” would open new international stores in Australia, China and Switzerland. Overall, Apple reported revenues of $7.51 billion for the quarter, down from the previous quarter, but a record for any previous second quarter, and up from the same quarter of 2007. Profit was $1.05 billion, up from $770 million in the same quarter of 2007.
Oppenheimer said that 50 percent of the CPU sales in the stores are to those who are new-to-Mac, a figure that has not changed over the past year.
In response to a question about international stores during the call, Oppenheimer said there will be more international store openings this year compared to last year, and noted there are 27 international stores now. He also noted that the fiscal year forecast of 45 total new stores represents an increase from previous company statements.
Interestingly, Mac and associated product sales composed 59 percent of the company’s total revenue, indicating that computers remain a substantial part of the business. Music-related products made up 36 percent of the total revenue. Total computer sales were 2,289,000, while 10,644,000 iPods were sold during the quarter.
Oppenheimer said the Best Buy pilot ended the quarter with just under 400 stores participating in the store-within-a-store concept, and that Apple is on target to have 600 installations by summer. He said the program is going “extremely well” and that the company is still “very happy” with the program.
During the conference call, Oppenheimer seemed particularly delighted with the number of visitors to the stores. He noted that the increase was 12 million visitors compared to the same quarter of 2007. “And we have only 208 stores,” he pointed out to a questioner. Later in the call, he repeated the figures to another questioner.
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