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IPhone maker Apple Inc. dragged down tech stocks in after-hours trading late today thanks to a light forecast for its next quarter and a warning to investors it would stop providing unit sales figures for iPhones and other products.

Apple’s stock was down by 6.5 percent in after-hours trading, wiping out most of the tech-heavy Nasdaq’s gains from today’s regular session. Update: Shares fell 6.6 percent in Friday trading, but the Nasdaq index declined only 1 percent.

The stock drop came in spite of what was otherwise a solid performance for Apple, which beat market expectations to record its best-ever fourth quarter. The company posted earnings of $2.91 per diluted share, up 41 percent from the same period one year ago. Revenue topped $62.9 billion, up 20 percent from the year before.

Wall Street was expecting earnings of $2.78 per share on revenue of $61.57. For its full fiscal 2018 year, Apple delivered a net income of $59.5 billion, or $11.91 per share on revenue of $256.6 billion.

Still, Apple’s numbers were tempered somewhat by poor guidance for the current three-month period. Apple executives said they’re expecting revenue between $89 billion and $93 billion for the first quarter of 2019. Analysts had forecast revenue of $92.91 billion.

Apple’s stock drop might also be attributed to somewhat disappointing sales of its iPhones. The company said it sold 46.9 million iPhones in the fourth quarter, compared with the 47.6 million units that Wall Street analysts had predicted.

This was offset by increased revenues, however. All in all, iPhone revenue jumped 29 percent to $37.2 billion as consumers rushed to buy newer and pricier devices such as the new $999 iPhone XS and the $1,099 XS Max. This helped bump up the average selling price for iPhones to $793, from $618 one year ago. Analysts were expecting an ASP of just $741.

“IPhone sales were soft but profits were up significantly due to the jump in the cost per handset,” said Charles King, an analyst with Pund-IT Inc. “That’s become something of a classic bad news/good news issue for Apple as smartphone markets have matured, leading the company’s shares to suffer some short-term volatility.”

Elsewhere, Apple’s iPad revenue took a big hit, falling by 15 percent to $4.09 billion on the back of 9.69 million unit sales. The company shifted 5.3 million Mac PCs in the period, bringing in another $7.41 billion in revenue, up 3 percent from one year ago.

Services revenue was another bright spot, with Apple raking in $9.98 billion there, up 17 percent from one year ago. In a conference call, Apple’s chief executive officer Tim Cook (pictured) spoke of the “exceptional performance” of Apple Pay, which tripled its transaction volume compared to the same period one year before. There was also good news from the “other products” category, which includes products such as the Apple Watch and Apple TV. Revenue here came in at $4.23 billion, up 31 percent. This was due to solid growth in Apple’s wearable products, which saw revenue gains of more than 50 percent.

But analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. said the other business units were no longer a good indicator of Apple’s fortunes given the importance of its iconic iPhones.

“Apple is effectively an iPhone company now and it stands and falls with its iPhone sales,” Mueller said. “And with iPhone unit sales disappointing this quarter it doesn’t matter that services sales have hit a record high.”

Other analysts felt that investors were more upset about Apple’s guidance, however. Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, told SiliconANGLE that investors were probably happy with the overall quarterly performance, but worried about its prospects next quarter.

“The key worry is how long can Apple upsell to consumers,” Moorhead said. “I believe Apple has a few quarters of it, but it will need to look to something different if it wants big growth in late 2019.”

And indeed something will be different, at least as far as Apple’s reporting is concerned. Shortly after posting its financial results, Apple executives took investors by surprise with the announcement that it will no longer detail unit sales for its iPhone, iPad and Mac devices.

The move is likely a reflection of the fact that Apple’s unit sales have largely been flat for some time, even though its revenue continues to rise on the back of higher pricing.

“As demonstrated by our financial performance in recent years, the number of units sold in any 90-day period is not necessarily representative of the underlying strength of our business,” Apple Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri said in a conference call. “Furthermore, our unit of sale is less relevant for us today than it was in the past, given the breadth of our portfolio and the wider sales price dispersion within any given product line.”

Apple will still report the revenues brought in from the sales of each device type.

Mueller interpreted the move as a sign that Apple is less confident about the strength of future iPhone sales, saying that it allows the company to be more flexible regarding how it reports its numbers. “But it’s also a way to hide potential issues that it will have in a few quarters from now,” he added.

Analyst King said Apple’s decision to eliminate some of its transparency over sales figures isn’t particularly original, as many companies have made similar decisions for similar reasons in the past.

“But investors aren’t terribly happy about it or the company’s cautious guidance for fourth-quarter holiday sales,” King said.

Regarding the low guidance, King said Apple is generally conservative about this in any case, and that it was being especially careful because of uncertainties over the U.S. midterm elections and the ongoing trade standoff with China.

“Unless a new trade agreement is signed, it could seriously disrupt business for Apple and numerous other tech and electronics vendors,” King said. “Given those circumstances, the company’s cautiousness is warranted and wise.”

Photo: Markus Spiering/Flickr