Luca Maestri, Apple's CFO since 2014, spoke yesterday at a technology conference promoted by Goldman Sachs. Maestri did not bite his tongue and addressed all those current issues from the Cupertino-based company.
Although we will summarize the essence of the interview, you can see it in full on the Apple page here (lasts about 35 minutes).
Maestri began the interview by making a small economic summary of the Californian company and reiterated the good results and the large profits that the company achieved in the last months of last year.
When asked about the slowdown in iPhone growth, Apple's CFO quickly stated that this product grew again and had a record in the last quarter. In addition, he attributed the good results of the iPhone during the first quarter of 2017 to a higher demand for the 'Plus' models.
"The Demand for the iPhone 7 Plus has been much higher than originally planned. Surely the double camera has been a key feature of this success. "
As to global growth, Maestri added that emerging markets continue to represent a great opportunity for Apple. In many emerging markets, Apple has a single-digit market share, Maestri said, which means there is plenty of room for improvement and growth.
As for the Chinese market, Luca made reference to the increase in business in the last 6 years in the Asian country, going from about $ 3 million to $ 48 million in just 6 years. Furthermore, in recent years it has grown at a rate of 50% in that country.
«The key in China will be our service sector. There we have great potential with that. Apple Music, iTunes and the App Store will be important there. "
In addition, he warned that Apple expects to double the size of its streaming music or sales platforms over the next 4 years. Although he referred to the fact that Apple still does not have a roadmap to follow for it:
“The App Store is doing incredibly well, the quality and quantity of content continues to improve all the time. With music, it is important to note that we are by far the biggest player in digital music. We combine our download model with our streaming service, which comes from the acquisition of Beats. With the union of these two businesses, we are clearly number one in music. We really want to offer the best popular offer and we think we are succeeding. "
As for profit margins, he did not hide and was proud to say that Apple has around 40% profit margin per product. "We have a good management record in all business levers"- He said.
Among other things, Maestri also referred to the growing budget that Apple dedicates to the section of research and development. According to him, this is due to two factors: a larger portfolio and continued investments in services to improve them day by day:
“Today we do much more in-house development of some critical technologies than we used to do a few years ago. It is very important to us because we can drive forward on innovation, we can better control time, cost and quality. We see it as part of a great strategic investment. "
As for w, referred to the Apple Watch explaining that we just came out of its best quarter and that its sales would have been higher if Apple had been able to keep up with the demand.
Finally, Luca talked about the new Apple Campus 2, already finished. Explained that Just because of its infrastructure and what it represents, the brand's new headquarters will bring a large crowd of visitors, something Apple still doesn't know how to tackle.
In short, Luca Maestri was really happy with the work that Apple has been doing all this time, and especially proud of how the entire fabric of the Apple ecosystem is.
