Monday 2 November 2026
Apple beats Wall Street in Ternus's first earnings report, with iPhone and services at records and memory costs still rising
Apple reported fiscal fourth quarter sales of 114.48 billion dollars on Monday, above the 113.39 billion dollars analysts expected, and profit of 2.10 dollars a share against 1.99 dollars expected, in the first earnings report under chief executive John Ternus. iPhone sales set a September quarter record at 57.58 billion dollars, services reached an all time high of 31.57 billion dollars, and Mac sales were 10.79 billion dollars, all above estimates. Gross margin was 47.9 percent. Rising memory chip costs remain the pressure on the business, and Apple shares fell about 1 percent in after hours trading despite the beat. The figures are as of November 2.
Ternus took over from Tim Cook on September 1, and his first quarter as chief executive closed with a record. “Today, Apple is proud to report a September quarter revenue record of 114.5 billion, up 12 percent from a year ago, with iPhone reaching a September quarter record and Services reaching an all time high, capping off our best fiscal year ever,” he said. Chief financial officer Kevan Parekh put the full fiscal year revenue at an all time record 479 billion dollars, with double digit growth in earnings per share. Five cents of the quarter's earnings per share came from tariff refunds, and the refunds added about a point to the gross margin.
The product lines split. iPhone revenue of 57.58 billion dollars beat the 56.54 billion expected, helped by early demand for the iPhone 18 Pro line and by price increases. Mac revenue of 10.79 billion dollars beat the 9.61 billion expected, as the machines have become a favored platform for running artificial intelligence agents. Services matched expectations at 31.57 billion dollars. iPad sales of 6.23 billion dollars and wearables sales of 8.30 billion dollars both came in under estimates. Sales in Greater China rose to 17.54 billion dollars but missed the roughly 18.55 billion analysts had modeled.
The new hardware is selling against its supply. Ternus told Reuters the iPhone Duo, Apple's first foldable phone, is constrained as of Monday, and that a very small percentage of Duo units had been returned for display problems, with Apple replacing them. On artificial intelligence, he said the rebuilt Siri is now handling 2.5 billion requests a day. The cost question that hung over the morning preview of this report is still the open one: memory prices rose again in the quarter, and Ternus said higher memory costs compared with the June quarter were partly offset by inventory Apple had built up and lower costs on other components. The holiday quarter, when the foldable phone, the smart home hub and the first touch screen laptops meet those memory prices at full volume, is the test the numbers have now set up.
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