Apple beats estimates, but slows, doubles India revenue; Amazon says, ‘no slowdown yet’; Paytm on track, says CEO

Apple reported fiscal third-quarter earnings on Thursday that beat Wall Street expectations for sales and profit, but a slowdown in growth was clear. In India, the company doubled its revenue and said enterprises like Wipro were buying Apple products to attract and retain talent. And Paytm is on track to break even by September 2023, founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma told shareholders. Notes: Apple reported fiscal third-quarter earnings on Thursday that beat Wall Street expectations for sales and profit but a slowdown in growth was clear. Apple’s revenue rose 2 percent to $83 billion during the quarter, compared with 36 percent for the same period last year and more than 8 percent in the March quarter. CEO Tim Cook said the results were better than expected while CFO Luca Maestri said it was a “challenging operating environment,” in a press release. “In terms of an outlook in the aggregate, we expect revenue to accelerate in the September quarter despite seeing some pockets of softness,” Cook told CNBC. Specific to operations in India, Cook said the company saw “a new doubling of revenue,” according to an email from the company, highlighting the comments specific to this market. CFO Maestri added that Apple was making inroads into the enterprise segment in markets including India, and provided the example of IT services company Wipro, which was buying MacBook Air laptops running on Apple’s M1 chips for recruits worldwide. Meanwhile, Amazon executives told reporters at a conference yesterday that they were not seeing a slowdown. The ecommerce giant beat estimates on revenue for its fiscal second quarter, sending its shares higher by 13 percent, even though earnings missed expectations. On the impact of inflation, Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky told reporters, “We have not seen anything yet,” CNBC reports. “We saw demand increase during the quarter, and we had a very strong June,” Olsavsky added, according to CNBC. One97 Communications, one of India’s biggest payments companies that operates under the ubiquitous brand Paytm, is on track to breakeven by September 2023, founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma told shareholders in a letter, yesterday, published in the company’s first annual report after it went public last year. “I believe that over the past year, our team has done a great job in massively improving our revenues and contribution profits,” Sharma said in the letter. This allows for investments in the company’s payments and credit businesses while at the same time reducing its EBITDA losses, he said. For the fiscal year ended March 2022, One97 reported consolidated revenues of Rs. 5264 crores, an increase of 65 percent over the previous year. EBITDA level losses – excluding employee stock option plan expenses – came down to Rs. 1518 crore, from 1655 crore, according to the annual report. “We are seeing excellent momentum in our businesses and are on track to achieve operating profitability (EBITDA before ESOP cost) by the quarter ending September 2023,” he said. Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds: https://soundcloud.com/freemusicandsounds