Earning Plays

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Apple Inc. reported a surge in earnings on Tuesday afternoon, solidly beating Wall Street’s estimates thanks to better-than-expected sales of the company’s iPhone and iPad product lines.
Earnings for Apple’s fiscal third quarter more than doubled from the same period last year, and the company generated more than $11 billion in cash from operations during the period.

When the stock resumed trading in after-hours action, it jumped about 7% to $402.73. The shares ended the regular session up 0.8% at $376.85.

“Obviously, it’s a pretty astounding number,” said analyst Scott Sutherland of Wedbush in an interview, speaking of the earnings growth.

The stock has jumped about 19% over the last month, in contrast to a flat first half of the year.

In the three months that ended June 25, Apple /quotes/zigman/68270/quotes/nls/aapl AAPL +5.44% said it earned $7.3 billion, or $7.79 a share, compared to $3.25 billion, or $3.51 a share, for the comparable period the previous year.

Revenue leaped 82% to $28.57 billion.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-earnings-surge-iphone-sales-beat-targets-2011-07-19