What would you say if I told you about a company that had increased quarterly sales by 33% and earnings by 38%, while widening its profit margin, reducing its share count through buybacks and building up a record cash hoard of over $200 billion?

And what would you say if that same company’s stock was trading for 13.7 times analysts’ 2015 earnings estimates, less than the S&P 500 Index’s 17.5?

The company is Apple Inc. AAPL, +3.03% . The maker of the iPhone published results after the market closed Tuesday, and investors sent its stock down as much as 8% in extended trading. The shares declined 4% Wednesday to close at $125.22. Since then, the stock has declined even further to $122.82 Monday afternoon.

Read:5 reasons why Apple’s stock still beats Google’s

Still, Apple pretty much hit a home run. The following tables put Apple’s quarterly results into perspective. The company was in the lead for best sales-per-share growth among the 78 S&P 500 member companies that had reported results this earnings season through Tuesday.

Here are the 10 S&P 500 companies with the largest increases in sales per share:

Here are changes to earnings per share for the same set of companies:

There were two negative aspects to Apple’s earnings announcement that caused some analysts and investors to lose faith. Apple provided guidance, saying it expected sales for its fiscal fourth quarter to range between $49 billion and $51 billion. That was below the consensus estimate of $51.13 billion, among analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, before Apple’s announcement.

Sales of “only” $49 billion would represent a year-over-year increase of 16%, less impressive growth than Apple registered in the fiscal third quarter. Then again, during the fiscal fourth quarter of 2014, Apple increased sales by 12%. Apple’s sales tend to be much stronger in the first two fiscal quarters because new iPhone models are released in the fall.

Read:The message for bulls in Apple’s earnings

There was plenty of negative reaction in the media to the sales guidance. Articles featured quotes from analysts saying Apple’s sales are slowing. That’s misleading. Maybe the pace of sales growth is slowing, but nobody expects the company’s quarterly sales to decline from a year earlier.

Another irritation for investors was Apple’s cagey comments about sales of the new Apple Watch. In the earnings release, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company was “incredibly excited” about the watch. That’s it. During the earnings conference call, he said quite a bit about various ways customers have been using the watch, and that sales had accounted for “well over 100%” of growth in revenue from “other products.” That category, which includes Apple TV, Beats Electronics, the iPod and the Apple Watch, posted a sales increase of 49% to $2.64 billion.

Read:Apple stock downgraded on China demand concerns

Cook said the company’s decision not to release sales data for the watch was “not a matter of not being transparent, it was a matter of not giving our competition insight [into] a product that we’ve worked really hard on.” That’s a type of statement that really irks investors. It’s difficult to understand how providing sales figures would have given much “insight” to competitors, unless it would have discouraged them from competing in the smart watch business.

He added that “sales of the Watch did exceed our expectations and they did so despite supply still trailing demand at the end of the quarter,” and that “the Apple Watch sell-through was higher than the comparable launch periods of the original iPhone or the original iPad.”

So Cook seems hopeful about the long-term prospects for the Apple Watch, despite the perception that demand is weak. It’s possible that the Apple Watch won’t become a popular product, and that would be alarming to investors because of its major rollout this year. But as we have seen with Amazon.com AMZN, +0.18% , which was forced to announce a $170 million write-down on its failed Fire Phone, a large company developing new technology can recover quickly. Amazon’s stock has soared 57% this year.

On a brighter note, Apple grew sales in China by 112% to $13 billion and said emerging markets contributed 35% of its total revenue. It was also interesting to see a 9% increase in Mac computer unit sales, with Mac revenue also rising by 9% to $6.03 billion. It’s a tall order to increase PC sales these days.

Apple’s stock

Before its decline in after-market trading Tuesday, Apple’s stock was showing strength, trading above its 30-, 50- and 200-day moving averages. FactSet

Apple’s stock closed at $124.50 on Friday. It was trading for 13.6 times the consensus 2015 EPS estimate of $9.10, according to analysts polled by FactSet. What makes Apple look even more attractive, by this measure, is the fact that analysts expect earnings per share for the S&P 500, excluding the beleaguered energy sector, to rise by 4.5%, according to S&P Capital IQ. That’s a decent figure, but it pales in comparison with Apple’s 45% EPS increase.

Apple’s earnings per share jumped 45%, and net income rose 38%. The difference is explained by the buybacks, which reduced the company’s diluted share count by 5% from a year earlier. During the first three quarters of fiscal 2015, Apple bought back $22 billion worth of shares, but its cash and marketable securities rose to a record 202.8 billion.

There’s been a lot of discussion recently about how buybacks might amount to “financial engineering,” especially if a company is buying back shares at high prices, or if the buybacks simply counter the dilution caused by stock-based compensation to executives, or if the money might be better spent on business expansion. But those arguments don’t mean much in the case of Apple, whose cash is piling up.

Though Apple’s stock is depressed, it is nonetheless an incredible bargain.