Apple Posts $183 Million Profit

Apple Computer posted a $183 million profit for its first fiscal quarter of 2000. Apple’s unit shipments were up 46 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago: Apple sold nearly 1.4 million systems during the quarter (including 700,000 iMacs and 235,000 iBooks) and 51 percent of those sales were to international customers. Apple has $3.6 billion in cash and short term investments, and ended the quarter with less than one day of inventory on hand. Although these numbers are quite healthy, they would have been $178 million without some mammoth one-time events. Apple sold five million shares of ARM Holdings, plc. for a total gain of $101 million, and allotted $90 million dollars in "executive compensation" for turnaround-leader Steve Jobs, who was given options to buy 10 million shares of Apple stock and his own Gulfstream V jet. That’s not bad pay for a part-time job.