Monday 2 November 2026
Apple's new chief executive faces his first earnings call with memory costs rising and the holiday quarter on the line
John Ternus hosts his first earnings call as Apple's chief executive on Monday, two months after taking over from Tim Cook. Analysts expect Apple to report revenue of 113.39 billion dollars for its fiscal fourth quarter, up nearly 11 percent, and net profit of about 29.04 billion dollars, up about 6 percent, according to LSEG data as of November 2. The questions hanging over the call are the holiday quarter forecast, the rising price of memory chips that is pushing up the cost of every phone and laptop Apple sells, and what Ternus says about the revamped Siri and Apple's slower, privacy first approach to artificial intelligence.
Ternus, a hardware engineer by background, has not had a quiet first two months. He has overseen the launch of Apple's first foldable phone, a smart home hub and the company's first touch screen laptops. Monday's call is where investors find out whether that product blitz can carry the holiday quarter against memory chip prices that have surged across the industry and are expected to drag Apple's profit growth to its weakest in six quarters.
The forecasts underneath the call are still strong. iPhone sales are projected to climb about 15 percent to 56.54 billion dollars, and services revenue about 10 percent to 31.56 billion dollars, which would be that business's slowest growth in more than three years. Apple has stayed out of the heaviest artificial intelligence spending race, and that restraint has so far worked in its favor with investors. The pressure is in the comparison. Rival systems built around AI agents have moved faster than Siri, a point Synovus Trust portfolio manager Dan Morgan made to Reuters: recent agentic innovation far outpaces the experience with Siri AI, though Apple answers that its system is built on trust and privacy. OpenAI, which Apple is suing over alleged trade secret theft, is building devices meant to displace the iPhone itself. Ternus's remarks on AI will be read as closely as his numbers.
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