Apple’s Numbers, and the Usual Human Condition

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Apple, that purveyor of shiny rectangles, reported some decent numbers. Revenue went up, which is what companies are generally supposed to do. The stock, though? Barely a twitch. Up less than ten percent in a year. Down five percent, as of this writing. So it goes.

The iPhone, that little window into everyone’s lives, suddenly decided to sell again. A good time to buy the stock, you ask? Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? Humans always want a sign. A guarantee. There isn’t one.

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iPhone Momentum, Briefly

After a couple of years of feeling a bit… sluggish, the iPhone decided to cooperate. The strongest revenue growth since 2021, shortly after everyone realized we were all going to be staring at screens even more than usual. A strange time, that was.

The iPhone still provides nearly sixty percent of Apple’s income. Twenty-three percent growth in the last quarter, to eighty-five billion dollars. Analysts expected less. Tim Cook called the demand “staggering.” They always do. It’s a word.

iPads did okay, up six percent. Half the buyers were new to the product. Mac sales, however, slipped. Seven percent. Wearables, too, down a bit. It’s always something. Humans are fickle creatures.

Total product sales up sixteen percent. China was strong, up thirty-eight percent. The services side—App Store, iCloud, that sort of thing—jumped fourteen percent, to thirty billion. More digital dust, accumulating in the cloud.

Gross margins went up. Product margins by four-and-a-half percent. Service margins by one-and-a-quarter percent. Overall, forty-eight-point-two percent. Apple expects to keep it in that range, even with memory prices going up. A temporary reprieve, perhaps.

Revenue climbed sixteen percent to one hundred forty-three billion. Earnings per share jumped nineteen percent to two-eighty-four. Better than expected. It’s all just numbers, really. Shifting digits on a screen.

For the next quarter, Apple expects revenue to grow thirteen to sixteen percent. Services revenue should keep pace. The machine continues to hum.

So, About That Stock…

Apple fixed its biggest problems—slow iPhone sales and a weak China. It’s seeing growth it hasn’t seen in years. But the stock hasn’t moved much. A curious thing.

It’s the valuation, mostly. The stock climbed even when things weren’t so great, pushing the price up. Now, it trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of around thirty-one. And twenty-eight for the next year. More expensive than many of the other big tech companies.

Appropriately priced, perhaps. Which means limited upside, even with the good numbers. It’s a bit like expecting a miracle. It rarely happens. So it goes.

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2026-02-02 06:02