Apple boosts dividend, buyback as profit beats Street

(Reuters) - Apple Inc raised its dividend and boosted its share repurchase programme by $50 billion as it reported a 27 percent rise in quarterly revenue on the back of surging iPhone sales.

The most valuable publicly traded U.S. company sold 61.2 million iPhones in the quarter, up 40 percent from the year-ago quarter, but down from the record-breaking holiday quarter. It sold 12.6 million iPads, down 23 percent from a year ago.

Its shares rose 1.6 percent in after-hours trading to $134.52.

"A 60 million-plus iPhone number is a home run and will be cheered by the Street as this remains the bread and butter of Apple," said FBR Capital Markets analyst Daniel Ives. "The Street was looking for a $150 billion buyback, we would characterize a $200 billion buyback as exactly what the Street wanted as this has been a hot button issue."

Apple increased its share repurchase authorization to $140 billion from $90 billion announced last year.

On top of that, it raised its quarterly dividend 11 percent to 52 cents per share. Together, Apple estimated that would mean returning $200 billion to shareholders by the end of March 2017.

Apple said net income rose to $13.57 billion, or $2.33 per share, from $10.22 billion, or $1.66 per share, a year earlier.

Analysts had expected earnings per share of $2.16 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Revenue rose to $58.01 billion in the second quarter ended March 28, from $45.65 billion a year earlier. That beat Wall Street's expected revenue of $56 billion.

(Reporting by Devika Krishna Kumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila, Bernard Orr)