Alex Sirois
5 min read
Quick Read
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Apple (AAPL) posted its ninth straight EPS beat with revenue up 16%, while a new $100B buyback and 75.6% Services margin anchor the long-term bull case.
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Unlike MSFT and GOOGL, Apple combines a 171% ROE and 53% ROIC with 2.5 billion devices feeding a growing high-margin subscription flywheel.
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Tim Cook flagged surging DRAM costs as a ‘100-year flood,’ yet Apple raised iPhone prices and still guided for 9 to 11% September quarter revenue growth.
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Just released. Our analysts combed the entire stock market and named the ten best stocks to buy right now, and Apple didn’t make the cut. Enter your email to see the names that beat AAPL. The report is free. Enter your email and see if any of your stocks made the cut.
I keep hitting the buy button on Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) because the company just quietly rewrote the rules of its own product calendar, and most of my friends did not notice. Apple is officially breaking away from its traditional all-in-one September hardware event model, moving to a split release structure that spreads product catalysts across the year. That sounds like a logistics footnote, but it is material. For a long-term holder like me, it means more upgrade windows, more press cycles, and more moments where a customer walks into a store and hands over a credit card.
Why the Buy Button Keeps Firing
The core of my thesis is boring on purpose. Apple owns the customer. The active installed base surpassed 2.5 billion devices in Q1 FY2026, and paid subscriptions crossed 1.5 billion by the June quarter. That is the flywheel. Every device sold is a future Services customer, and Services is where the margin lives. Services gross margin came in at 75.6% in Q3 FY2026, with Services revenue of $30.7 billion, up 12% year over year. Hardware sells the razor. The blades pay my dividend.
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Three Reasons the Thesis Holds
First, the top line is accelerating from a base almost no company on earth can match. Q3 FY2026 revenue reached $109.42B, up 16.36% year over year, with EPS of $2.02 beating the $1.89 consensus, the ninth consecutive EPS beat. iPhone revenue was $54.3 billion, up 22%, and Mac revenue grew 29% to a June quarter record. Tim Cook told the call the iPhone cycle has been running “a 22% increase year to date”. That is a company still compounding at scale.
