We are going to give you Appleis PR straight as we work on the Stock Watch and prep for Appleis Q2 Conference Call. The company posted a profit of US$43 million which is 11 cents per share, blowing away estimates of a penny a share. In fact, that crushed the 4 cents per share that WhisperNumber.com has posted. The company has increased their cash holdings to US$4.1 Billion, and also said that 48% of their sales came from the non-US markets. That bodes well for those looking for signs of a European slowdown. Appleis PR, in its entirety:

Apple® (Nasdaq: AAPL - news) today announced financial results for its fiscal 2001 second quarter ended March 31, 2001. For the quarter, the Company posted a net profit of $43 million, or $.12 per diluted share. These results compare to a net profit of $233 million, or $.64 per diluted share, achieved in the year ago quarter. Revenues for the quarter were $1.43 billion, down 26 percent from the year ago quarter, and gross margins were 26.9 percent, compared to 28.2 percent in the year ago quarter. International sales accounted for 48 percent of the quarteris revenues.

The quarteris results included a $3 million net favorable impact from non-recurring items including an after-tax gain of $89 million resulting from the sale of approximately 23 million shares of ARM Holdings plc. and an after tax charge of $86 million related to the write down of certain equity investments. Without these non-recurring items, the Companyis net profit for the quarter would have been $40 million, or $.11 per diluted share.

Apple shipped 751 thousand Macintosh® units during the quarter.

"Apple returned to profitability in this tough economic climate by launching several innovative new products," said Steve Jobs, Appleis CEO. "During the quarter we shipped the Titanium PowerBook G4, widely regarded as a major breakthrough in notebook computers; Mac OS X, the worldis most advanced operating system; iTunes, the easiest way to create a music library on your computer and iburni custom music CDs; and iDVD and SuperDrive, our revolutionary software and drive that together enable users to create and iburni their own custom DVDs. It was a great new product quarter, and thereis still more to come."

"We feel very good about delivering solid profitability while reaching our goal of 4 weeks of channel inventory ahead of schedule,ii said Fred Anderson, Appleis CFO. "Our balance sheet remains very strong, with over $4.1 billion in cash. We now expect to generate $3.2 to $3.4 billion in revenues in the second half of the fiscal year, and we are targeting sequential improvements in both revenues and profits in the June and September quarters."

For other stories regarding Appleis stock activity, visit our updated Apple Stock Watch Special Report. You can also check out our Apple Financial Boards, for discussion of AAPL and Appleis financials.

We are providing live coverage of Appleis Conference Call at 2:00 PM PST.