Shipping a record 1.61 million Macs helped Apple achieve stellar financial results for the fourth quarter of the company's fiscal year 2006, which ended 30-Sep-06. Apple announced that it posted a net profit of $546 million on revenue of $4.84 billion for the quarter, compared to a net profit of $430 million on revenue of $3.68 billion in the corresponding quarter a year ago.

Key to these numbers were shipments of 1,610,000 Macintosh computers and 8,729,000 iPods during the quarter, which the company says represents a 30-percent increase in Macintosh sales and 35 percent growth in iPod sales from the same quarter a year ago. In a press release, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said, "This strong quarter caps an extraordinary year for Apple. Selling more than 39 million iPods and 5.3 million Macs while performing an incredibly complex architecture transition is something we are all very proud of."

Apple finishes its fiscal year with over $10 billion in cash. CFO Peter Oppenheimer says the company expects revenue of between $6 billion and $6.2 billion for the first quarter of fiscal year 2007, which ends on 31-Dec-06. Apple's announcement added a warning that the results might be subject to significant adjustment "as a result of a likely restatement of historical results," due to the current investigation of Apple's stock option practices (see "Apple Reports on Options Backdating Problems," 09-Oct-06). This adjustment could result in anywhere from tens to hundreds of millions of dollars of retroactively lower earnings, but would require little cash expenditure unless irregularities beyond the scope reported by Apple from its internal investigation appear.