Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And so things are moving in the right direction there. It’s become a very large business for us in Wearables, Home and Accessories. The last 12 months, we’ve done $40 billion of business, which is nearly the size of a Fortune 100 company. So it’s become very important, and it’s allowed us to diversify both our revenues and our earnings.

Amit Daryanani: That’s really helpful. And then if I could just follow up, the Europe growth, the growth in Europe at up 5% is totally notable as well. I think you have a few emerging markets that you put in Europe as well. But I would love to understand what’s happening in Europe and if there’s a way to think about sort of Western Europe or developed world versus emerging markets over there.

Luca Maestri: Yes. It’s been very good, primarily on the emerging market side of Europe. We include India and the Middle East and Central and Eastern Europe into the Europe segment. But as we mentioned at the beginning of the call, we had a number of markets that did very well, like France, like Italy, the Netherlands, Austria. So it was a good quarter for Europe.

Operator: Our next question is from Harsh Kumar with Piper Sandler.

Harsh Kumar: I have one for Luca and then later on one for Tim. So Luca, for some time now, for many quarters, you’ve had a currency headwind or foreign exchange currency headwind. It’s conceivable that as rates start to come down, hopefully next year that the dollar weakens. Could you take us through the mechanism of how that will work on your revenues and for your costs?

Luca Maestri: So we tend — we try to hedge our foreign exchange exposures because we think it’s the right approach for the company in terms of minimizing the volatility that necessarily happens from the movements of currencies. We cannot effectively hedge every single exposure around the world because in some cases, it is not possible. In other cases, it is prohibitively expensive. But we tend to cover all the major currency payers that we have. About 60% of our business is outside the United States. So it’s a very, very large and, I would say, very effective hedging program. And so we set up these hedges, and they tend to roll over very regularly. And then we replace them with new hedges at the new spot rate. So the impact that we’re going to have on revenue and cost will depend on where the spot rates are at different points in time.

And therefore, because of the way the program works, tends to be a bit of a lag in both directions as the foreign exchange moves over time.

Harsh Kumar: Understood. Very helpful. And for Tim, Tim, historically, for the last many years, carriers in at least the U.S., which I think is your largest market for iPhone, have had programs to help folks upgrade, whether they give a cash rebate or you bring in your old phone, something like that. I was curious, as you get into your peak December quarter, if you’re aware of these programs are in place. And the reason why I’m asking is I think earlier, you mentioned that more than 50% of your phones are sold through some kind of program. I assume the number is even higher in the U.S.

Tim Cook: I don’t want to get into revealing specifics in the different carriers. But generally speaking, I would think that it would be quite easy to find a promotion on a phone, provided you’re hooking up to a service and either switching services, carriers or upgrading your phone at the same carrier. I think both of those cases today that you can find promotions out there, and I would expect that you’d be able to do that in the December time frame as well.

Operator: Our next question is from Aaron Rakers with Wells Fargo.