While Apple gets a freebie in the current (fourth fiscal) quarter, as it came just before the official release of the iPhone 8 and X, traders were still looking at overall trends and guidance from Tim Cook on what to expected from the all-important holiday quarter. What they got was just what they requested, with Apple not only reporting a beat on the top and bottom line, including the first positive quarter in China in one and a half years, but also providing strong iPhone X guidance for a record holiday quarter, which promptly sent the stock price surging over 3% in the after hours, now just $100 billion away from $1 trillion in market cap.

Apple reported Q4 EPS and revenues of $2.07 and $52.6bn, both beating expectations of $1.87 and $50.7bn, even if gross margin was a small disappointment, printing at 37.9% vs 38.0% expected. Apple also reported Q4 iPhone sales of 46.7 million, also higher than the 46.1 million consensus estimate with 10.3 million iPads sold in the quarter, above the 9.3 million sold a quarter ago. 

Far more important, however, was Apple’s forecast for the current, holiday quarter, in which Apple sees record revenue in the range of $84-$87Bn, higher than the consensus midpoint of 84.5%, on margins of 38.0-38.5%, vs est of 38.5%.

The full forecast in a nutshell:

Apple also announced it generated $8.5 billion in revenues on services, which includes the App Store and Apple Music, in Q417. This was a 34% increase from $6.3 billion in the year-ago quarter and 17% quarter over quarter growth. According to Bloomberg, this is an all-time record for Apple services, suggesting strong Apple Music subscription numbers. Apple has recently started offering cheaper student pricing and family plans for Apple Music.