Apple gets back some shine with second straight profit

     The company, battling back from nearly two years of red ink, reported its second straight quarterly profit, blowing away expectations.
      Popular new computers and continued cost cutting helped Apple earn $55 million in the January-March quarter, typically a slow one for computer companies.
      The results, reported Wednesay, marked the first time in nearly three years that Apple had back-to-back quarterly profits. Wall Street investors cheered the news, pushing up the company's stock price 6 percent, or $1.62 1/2 to $29.06 1/4, in early trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
      Industry analysts, while believing it too early to declare a recovery, said the results showed that co-founder and interim leader Steve Jobs has Apple on the right track.
      Just as important, they said, they should help soothe fears about the company's future.
      ``It will give Apple the focus they want right now, which is not necessarily `We're back,' but `We're turning it around,''' said Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies Research International in San Jose, Calif.
      Apple's profit for its second fiscal quarter amounted to 38 cents a share. Analysts surveyed by First Call had predicted per-share earnings of 17 cents.
      It compares with a loss of $708 million, or $5.64 cents a share, a year ago, when the company paid for a restructuring and an acquisition.
      Revenue slipped 12.5 percent, to $1.4 billion from $1.6 billion. But Apple shipped more computers than the previous quarter and the year-ago period - the first time since December 1996 that has happened.
      ``Apple had a great quarter, no question about it,'' Jobs said in a statement.
      The industrywide trend toward lower prices was partly responsible for the drop in revenue, said Apple's chief financial officer Fred Anderson.
      Sales also were affected by scaled-back production of printers and other imaging wares. In addition, revenues from Powerbook computers were off sharply from a year-ago quarter, when customers snapped up new models.
      Apple expects revenues to be flat for another quarter or two, then pick up after it introduces new computers, including new Powerbooks and consumer machines, Anderson said.
      ``We believe we will have the product lineup to show meaningful year-over-year growth by December,'' he said in a conference call with analysts and reporters.
      During the period, Apple's second fiscal quarter, the company saw gross margins rise, thanks to Macintosh G3 computers, introduced last fall. Those machines are aimed primarily at the publishing and graphics businesses.
      The company also met its goal of continuing to reduce expenses. The number of employees fell by about 260 to 9,049, and the company has just laid off another 170 workers.
      Analysts were pleased with Apple's report, particularly with a 2.5 percent increase in shipments over the October-December quarter.
      But they also said Apple still needs to show it can retain some of its most important customers.
      This spring and summer - when schools traditionally place their computer orders - will test whether Apple has been holding its ground in that market, said James Staten, an analyst with Dataquest Inc. in San Jose, Calif.
      And while Apple plans new Macs for the home, including low-cost models, consumers left out of Apple's recent offerings may have given up and switched to competing machines.
      ``There may not be a whole lot of consumers left to get,'' Staten said.
      Still, the report was likely to cheer Apple's supporters, who in recent years have had little financial news to celebrate. Before posting a $47 million profit for the October-December quarter, Apple lost nearly $2 billion in two years.
      Apple pioneered the commercial personal computer in the 1970s, and made it easy to use in the 1980s with the Macintosh. But it fell on hard times in the 1990s as rival machines using Microsoft Corp. software largely erased the Mac's ease-of-use advantage.
      Shrinking sales and market share led to two management shakeups in as many years. In the latest, co-founder Jobs replaced ousted chief executive Gil Amelio last July.
      Since then, Apple has introduced speedy G3 Macintosh computers aimed at businesses, started building computers to order over the Internet, and stopping making its Newton hand-held devices.
      It also has forged closer ties with Microsoft and reversed course on allowing clones.