Apple Stock Takes A Tumble In After Hours Trading

In case you missed the hullabaloo, Apple delivered its earnings report for Q1 2013 this afternoon. While things looked excellent for the most part, something about the report has investors worried, as Apple's stock price has taken something of a plunge during after hours trading. After an encouraging regular trading day that ended with a gain of 1.83%, Apple's stock price has slid $52.56 to $461.74, representing a 10% loss.

It's confusing at first glance, because the numbers posted this afternoon were pretty great. Apple sold a record 47.8 million iPhones and a record 22.9 million iPads during the quarter, and posted a revenue of $54.5 billion, which is up year-over-year from $46.3 billion. The company's average weekly revenue during the quarter was an astounding $4.2 billion, which is quite a bit more than the average of $3.3 billion it was posting a year ago.

While those are some ridiculously large numbers, there were also some declines in Apple's report. Mac and iPod sales were both down year-over-year, with 4.1 million Macs being sold (down from 5.2 million), and Apple moving 12.7 million iPods (down from 15.4 million). Net profit remained more or less flat, and earnings-per-share dropped ever so slightly, going from $13.87 a year ago to $13.81.

So, it could be that investors are paying more attention to the negatives than the positives. It'll be interesting to see what happens over the next few days of regular trading – will Apple's stock rebound, or will investors send it down further? Time will tell, so stay tuned.

[via Google Finance]