Street sweet on Apple Q4

Apple shares rose Wednesday after the company delivered a strong fiscal fourthquarter earnings report despite cooling demand for the iPhone, its flagship product.

The tech giant said it enjoyed a 1.8 percent rise in revenue, to $64 billion, for the quarter ended in September — driven in part by rising sales of wearables and services, such as mobile payments.

Those gains helped offset a 9.2 percent drop in iPhone sales during the quarter, which Chief Executive Tim Cook noted was an improvement from recent quarters in which iPhone sales slowed by double digits.

Cook further boosted investors’ spirits by saying Apple’s latest iPhones, including the iPhone 11, which features a cheaper price tag than its predecessor — something unheard of for Apple — are off to “a very, very good start.”

Shares gained 1.8 percent in extended trading, to $247.73 a share, after closing flat at $243.26.

Apple’s profit dipped 3 percent, to $13.7 billion, but the earnings per share of $3.03 topped analyst projections. Revenue of $64 billion exceeded analyst predictions of $63 billion.

Cook said iPhone sales in China ticked up toward the end of the quarter, including several days of sales of the new iPhone 11 models. That should bode well for the next quarter, when the company is predicting $85.5 billion to $89.5 billion in sales against analyst estimates of $86.9 billion. “We’re very optimistic about what the holiday quarter has in store,” he said.