Apple CEO Tim Cook gestures as he departs after a business leaders reception with the US President on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos on January 21, 2026.
Fabrice Coffrini | Afp | Getty Images
Apple is set to report fiscal first-quarter earnings on Thursday after the bell.
Here’s what Wall Street is expecting, according to LSEG consensus estimates:
- EPS: $2.67
- Revenue: $138.48 billion
Apple’s fiscal first quarter ended in December, and the company previously signaled that it anticipated a lot of people would buy iPhones in the holiday season.
The company said it expected overall revenue to grow between 10% and 12% in the quarter and a similar double-digit growth rate for iPhone sales. That would indicate Apple is expecting between $136.73 billion and $139.22 billion in the first full quarter of iPhone 17 sales.
This has led to optimism among analysts that the company will post a beat on Thursday. Regardless, investors have sold off the stock, and it’s down nearly 11% since its peak on Dec. 2.
Analysts will likely press Apple’s management on operating costs and how much the company is paying for components like memory and storage that have seen prices skyrocket because of an artificial intelligence-driven shortage.
All of Apple’s computers, including the iPhone, Mac and iPad use a lot of storage and memory, raising questions about how the company plans to handle increased component costs during what it says is a major growth cycle. Finance chief Kevan Parekh said in October that while the company was seeing a slight tail wind on memory prices, he downplayed it as “nothing really to note there.”
“We don’t believe Street has embedded enough of a margin impact from rising memory costs into its FY26 estimates,” Morgan Stanley analyst Erik Woodring wrote in a Monday note. He has the equivalent of a buy rating on the stock and a $315 price target.
Woodring added that he doesn’t expect the surge in memory prices to affect Apple this quarter, but that could change as the year goes on.
“We don’t believe consensus still has adjusted to the better than expected iPhone 17 cycle, yet at the same time they haven’t adjusted to higher opex and/or gross margin headwinds,” Woodring wrote.
Apple CEO Tim Cook will also likely be asked about the company’s AI strategy. Earlier this month, the company announced that it picked Google’s Gemini to run part of its Apple Intelligence software, replacing some internally built artificial intelligence models.
Cook may also mention a highly anticipated Siri launch this year that is “more personal” and takes advantage of AI advancements.
But even Apple’s AI story may run into issues with memory prices, as Jeffries analysts this week noted that “AI’s commercialization and monetization remains challenging.”
“Not only is the AI use case not clear for consumers, rapidly rising memory prices would likely make any edge AI applications harder to financially justify in the next two years,” Jefferies analyst Edison Lee wrote on Monday. He has a hold rating on the stock.
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