CHENGDU, CHINA – MARCH 18: Apple CEO Tim Cook attends a special event to celebrate Apple’s 50th anniversary at Apple Store Taikoo Li Chengdu on March 18, 2026 in Chengdu, Sichuan Province of China.
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an apple shares jumped more than 4% on Thursday, heading for the sharpest rally since August, after the iPhone maker reported better-than-expected quarterly results and issued guidance for current-year revenue that beat analysts’ estimates.
CEO Tim Cook, who is preparing to step down in September after 15 years at the helm, has praised the company’s performance in the face of major supply chain problems due largely to the global recall.
The company said revenue in the third fiscal quarter, which ends in June, would rise between 14% and 17% from a year ago, while analysts had forecast growth of 9.5%. Apple sees continued demand for the iPhone 17 family, which Cook calls “the most popular lineup in our history,” as well as a number of Mac models.
In March, Apple released a low-cost computer called the MacBook Neo, and Cook said late Wednesday that customer response was “just off the charts, with demand exceeding expectations.”
Analysts sought clarity from Cook, who said the company will “look at a variety of options” to address rising memory costs, a trend the CEO sees on the rise. Investors didn’t get many answers, but they didn’t care much.
“That creates risk, but after last night’s results, we feel much better about Apple’s ability to manage margins” than previously expected, Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a note to clients on Friday. “It’s one of the biggest sources of our high post-revenue earnings estimates.”
Analysts, who recommend buying the stock, raised their earnings per share for the fiscal year to $8.89 from $8.63.
Ahead of the bullish guidance issued on the earnings call, Apple reported a revenue and earnings beat for its fiscal second quarter. Revenue rose 17% to $111.18 billion from $95.4 billion last year. Analysts had expected sales of $109.66 billion, according to LSEG.
The company raised estimates for Mac revenue, iPad revenue and services, but came up short on iPhone sales. Apple continued to generate profits as it strengthened its services business, which comes with much higher margins than hardware.
Services revenue for the quarter rose nearly 16% to $30.98 billion from $26.65 billion a year ago. Apple uses its large number of customers – and a total of more than 2.5 billion active devices in the market – to sell subscriptions to entertainment services, as well as Apple Pay, iCloud and AppleCare services.
Long standing in the high 30s, Apple’s gross margin has been rising steadily in recent years, reaching 49.3% in the latest quarter, up from 48.2% in the previous period. In the June quarter, Apple said its gross margin would be between 47.5% and 48.5%.
KeyBanc analysts, who average hold on the stock, said Apple’s margin forecast “does not reflect expected memory price declines.”
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