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Tim Cook's Final Earnings Call Arrives as Apple Hits $5 Trillion Market Cap
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Tim Cook's Final Earnings Call Arrives as Apple Hits $5 Trillion Market Cap

Tim Cook presides over his last Apple earnings call this week, the same week the company touched a $5 trillion market cap and overtook Nvidia as the world's

July 29, 2026Source: cnbc.com ↗

Tim Cook's final earnings call as Apple CEO takes place the same week the iPhone maker touched a $5 trillion market cap and surpassed Nvidia as the world's most valuable company.

Even with the stock trading at a record price and up 25% this year, topping its megacap peers, Apple is reckoning with a memory crunch and a rush for chip manufacturing capacity that's forcing the company to lift prices on devices. Meanwhile, Apple has still yet to launch a redesigned Siri to the public, which the article cites as the most glaring example of how far behind the company has fallen in artificial intelligence.

With Cook set to step down on Sept. 1 and assume the role of executive chairman, the emerging challenges will land in the lap of John Ternus, a 25-year Apple veteran and its head of hardware. Ternus said little on the prior earnings call in April, which came shortly after the CEO transition was announced. Investors are likely to ask more of him on Thursday, after the company reports fiscal third-quarter results. He'll become just the second CEO since Steve Jobs stepped down a few months before he died in 2011. Cook's 15-year run at the top has been highlighted by a fourteen-fold increase in the company's valuation, despite its inability to launch a major hardware platform after the iPhone and its struggle to find a big market for its high-priced Vision Pro virtual reality headset released in 2024.

"Tim Cook, he's a really talented supply chain operations guy, and I think he's done just a remarkable job of navigating the environment," said Melissa Otto, head of Visible Alpha research at S&P Global. "We'll get some visibility or some commentary at least around the current environment and how they're navigating it."

Price Hikes and Demand Concerns

Last month, Apple, citing the global memory shortage, raised starting iPad and Mac prices by at least $100, with some models increasing by more than $1,000. Analysts expect iPhone price hikes this year. Apple also announced a program with Klarna, a provider of buy now, pay later loans, that will allow customers in the U.S. to lease an iPhone for up to two years at a price starting at $17.99 per month.

  • Price increases of up to 20% on some devices were announced just before the end of the quarter, so their impact won't be felt until the current period.
  • For the quarter ended in June, analysts expect a total revenue increase of about 16%, with that growth number slipping to 12% in the current period.
  • Counterpoint Research sees total smartphone shipments falling nearly 14% this year, the steepest decline since 2013, with the lower end of the market — largely Android phones — at greatest risk.

Goldman Sachs analysts, who have a buy rating on the stock, wrote in a note this week that Apple could signal "market share gains given pricing increases at competitors." Apple has yet to raise iPhone prices or change forecasts even after its June warning, though some analysts are altering their models. Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a note last week: "We continue to believe that Apple fundamentals are very strong, with myriad price hikes likely to drive upside to revenue and EPS over the next 6-18 months." The firm recommends buying the stock but slashed its Mac forecast for the September quarter by 8% because of supply challenges.

The memory shortage is the biggest near-term challenge facing Apple, but the more significant longer-term risk relates to its AI strategy. Instead of spending heavily on AI infrastructure to build or serve advanced models, Apple is licensing much of its AI technology from Google.

Source: CNBC