Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) reported its fiscal first-quarter results after the close of trading on Tuesday. Earnings were reported as $3.06 in earnings per share (EPS) and $74.6 billion in revenue. This is 48% in earnings growth per share and is above the Thomson Reuters consensus estimates of $2.60 in EPS and $67.69 billion in revenue. The first fiscal quarter from the previous year had $2.07 in earnings per share and $57.59 billion in revenue.

In the first quarter, Apple had a gross margin of 39.9%, versus 37.9% last year, and ahead of its prior guidance. Net profit was listed as being $18 billion in the quarter. International sales were 65% of revenues — much higher than the prior sequential quarter. When you read the report, the only conclusion you can take away is that Tim Cook and his team just crushed the expectations.

Looking ahead to Apple’s fiscal second quarter, the company gave guidance of $52 to $55 billion in revenues and for gross margin to be 38.5% to 39.5%. The Thomson Reuters consensus estimates are $2.01 in earnings per share and $53.79 billion in revenue.

Everyone loves to tally up Apple’s cash balances. The company had roughly $178 billion in cash and its short-term and long-term investments. Operating cash flow was a sharp $33.7 billion. It spent $8 billion returning capital to shareholders, bringing the total capital returned via dividends and buybacks to almost $103 billion. Product sales were as follows:

• iPhone was 74.5 million units for revenue of $51.18 billion.
• iPad was 21.419 million units for $8.98 billion in revenue.
• Mac was 5.519 million units for $6.944 billion.
• iTunes/Software/Services revenue was $4.799 billion, up from $4.397 billion in the first quarter of last year.
• The “other” revenue was $2.689 billion, down 5% from the $2.836 billion reported a year earlier.

A combined quote from CEO Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri would be as follows:

• Time Cook – “We’d like to thank our customers for an incredible quarter, which saw demand for Apple products soar to an all-time high. Our revenue grew 30 percent over last year to $74.6 billion, and the execution by our teams to achieve these results was simply phenomenal.”
• Luca Maestri – “Our exceptional results produced EPS growth of 48 percent over last year, and $33.7 billion in operating cash flow during the quarter, an all-time record. We spent over $8 billion on our capital return program, bringing total returns to investors to almost $103 billion, over $57 billion of which occurred in just the last 12 months.”

Wells Fargo recently raised its estimates, and our guess is that analysts are going to be raising their 2015 earnings and revenues targets based upon this strong report. The one thing we noticed over and over going into earnings was that the iPhone estimates kept crawling higher and higher. They ended up at or above 70 million iPhone units from the more bullish analysts on Wall Street. 74.5 million quite simply crushes the higher-end of expectations.

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It sure looks like Tim Cook’s promise that China is overtaking the U.S. in unit sales is here or coming much sooner than expected.

Shares of Apple closed down 3.5% at $109.14 on Tuesday, and shares were indicated up by 5% at $114.64 in the after-hours trading session. Apple has a consensus analyst price target of $123.51 and a 52-week trading range of $70.51 to $119.75. Its market was roughly $640 billion at the closing price.

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