#苹果财报即将公布 Apple Earnings Preview: Google, Amazon and Meta Have All Stumbled—All Eyes Are on Apple

With a market cap of about $5 trillion and a P/E ratio of around 40, Apple has almost no room for error!
After Google, Amazon and Meta were successively sold off over AI spending, the last heavyweight among the “Magnificent Seven” is about to take the stage.

Apple has confirmed it will report its fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 results on Monday, November 2, and hold a conference call at 5 p.m. Eastern Time. This will be John Ternus’s first earnings call as Apple’s new CEO. He will be joined by CFO Kevin Parekh.

Market expectations: revenue growth of about 10%
Wall Street expects Apple to post earnings per share of $1.99 this quarter, up from $1.85 in the same period last year, and revenue of about $113.4 billion, up around 11% year over year. Strong iPhone demand is expected to offset the impact of rising costs and supply issues. This is broadly in line with Apple’s own guidance. In its previous quarterly results, Apple forecast year-over-year revenue growth of 9% to 11% this quarter, despite an approximately 2.5-percentage-point foreign-exchange headwind and more severe supply constraints for iPhone, Mac and iPad. On that basis, revenue should come in between $111.69 billion and $113.74 billion. Apple has rarely disappointed the market.
Bloomberg data show that Apple’s revenue, adjusted earnings per share and adjusted net income have exceeded market expectations for eight consecutive quarters.

The biggest test: rising memory prices
What investors are watching most in these results is not how much Apple sold, but how much it earned. On the previous quarter’s earnings call, outgoing CEO Cook issued a rare warning. In what he said would be his final earnings call, Cook warned that memory costs would continue to rise. He described memory prices as a “once-in-a-century flood” and said supply constraints on advanced-node chips would tighten significantly compared with the June quarter. CFO Parekh said on the July call that memory costs could explain more than 100% of the quarter-over-quarter change in adjusted gross margin.
This is directly reflected in the gross margin guidance. Apple expects gross margin of 47% to 48% this quarter, down from 50.1% in the previous quarter, a figure that included about 2 percentage points of tariff refund gains.
This quarter’s guidance also includes about 1 percentage point in tariff refund gains. In other words, excluding this one-off factor, pressure on Apple’s core business margins would be greater. Some firms are more pessimistic. In a preview report on October 30, Evercore ISI forecast revenue of about $113 billion, earnings per share of $1.97 and gross margin of 46.5%, below the low end of the company’s guidance. The impact of the memory shortage is also beginning to show up in production capacity. On October 20, Loop Capital lowered its expectations for Apple, citing reports that the company had cut production plans due to shortages of memory and processors. This is fully consistent with the state of the memory industry we have been tracking: SK Hynix says the memory shortage will last until 2030, Changxin reportedly even rejected Apple’s demands for price cuts, and Intel also lowered its guidance due to raw material shortages. Memory makers are raking in profits, while downstream companies like Apple can only offset costs by raising prices.

Apple’s response: price hikes
Apple’s strategy is straightforward. Analysts expect iPhone revenue to grow 14%, mainly thanks to price hikes during the quarter to offset memory costs, along with a stronger-than-usual replacement cycle. Apple warned in July that it expected to bear higher memory costs, and raised prices for Mac and iPad in June amid component shortages and capacity constraints. Data from China show that consumers are still willing to pay, at least for now. According to tracking by Chinese tech blogger “RD Observation,” sales of the iPhone 18 Pro series in China had reached about 6.02 million units as of October 25. Greater China was also a bright spot for Apple last quarter. Revenue in Greater China grew 22% to $18.82 billion.
There is no shortage of buzz around new products, either. Apple’s first foldable phone, iPhone Duo, sold out on launch day, with orders already backed up until next January.

The real focus: year-end guidance
However, these results will offer only a limited picture of sales of the new products. This fiscal quarter includes just nine days of sales for the iPhone 18 Pro series, so investors will be more focused on guidance for the December quarter, whether gross margin can stay within the 47% to 48% range, and what management says about memory costs. If Apple’s gross margin guidance comes in below that range, the market may interpret it as an impact from memory inflation rather than weak demand.
From this perspective, the November 2 results are more like an “early signal map.” A fuller report card will have to wait until late January next year, when Ternus has completed his first full quarter at Apple’s helm.

Apple’s valuation leaves little room for error
Expectations for Apple are already high. Its stock is up 27% year to date, and its P/E ratio is close to 40, leaving almost no room for error; if the market has doubts about its results or guidance, the stock could come under pressure. Wall Street analysts are also becoming more cautious on Apple. TipRanks data show that of 27 analysts, 13 rate the stock “Buy,” 10 “Hold” and 4 “Sell”; the average price target is $337.77, about 2% below the latest closing price of $344.63. Other analyses have also noted that Apple has often posted “better-than-expected results, only for its stock to fall.” The logic of this earnings season is now clear: the market is no longer looking only at growth, but at cash flow and margins.
For Apple, which does not rely on massive AI capital spending to drive growth, memory costs are its “cash-flow test.” How Ternus answers that question in his debut will determine whether Apple can remain “unscathed” amid the sell-off. $AAPL