Apple CEO Tim Cook gestures as he departs after a reception with the US president and business leaders on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos on January 21, 2026.
Fabrice Coffrini | AFP | Getty Images
apple First-quarter results are expected to be released Thursday afternoon after the bell.
Here’s what Wall Street is expecting, according to LSEG’s consensus estimates:
EPS: $2.67 Revenue: $138.48 billion
Apple’s fiscal first quarter ended in December, and the company has previously indicated that it expects many people to buy iPhones during the holiday season.
The company said it expects overall sales to increase 10% to 12% in the quarter, with iPhone sales expected to grow at double-digit rates as well. This indicates that Apple expects iPhone 17 sales for the entire first quarter to be between $136.73 billion and $139.22 billion.
That has given analysts optimism that the company will beat expectations on Thursday. Nevertheless, investors sold off the stock, and the stock price has fallen nearly 11% from its December 2 high.
Analysts are likely to grill Apple executives about operating costs and how much the company is paying for components such as memory and storage, whose prices have soared due to shortages caused by artificial intelligence.
Apple’s computers, including iPhones, Macs and iPads, all use large amounts of storage and memory, raising questions about how the company plans to deal with increased component costs at a time when the company claims to be in a major growth cycle. Finance chief Kevan Parekh said in October that the company was seeing some tailwinds in memory prices, but downplayed it as “nothing to write home about.”
“The Street does not believe FY26 estimates have fully incorporated the margin impact of higher memory costs,” Morgan Stanley analyst Eric Woodring said in a note Monday. He rates the stock the equivalent of a “buy” and has a price target of $315.
Woodring added that he doesn’t expect rising memory prices to impact Apple this quarter, but the situation could change as the year progresses.
“We don’t think the consensus has yet adapted to a better-than-expected iPhone 17 cycle, but we also don’t think it has adapted to higher operating margins or gross margin headwinds,” Woodring wrote.
Apple CEO Tim Cook is also likely to be asked about the company’s AI strategy. Earlier this month, the company announced that: Google Gemini replaces some of the artificial intelligence models built in-house and runs some of the Apple Intelligence software.
Cook may also mention this year’s long-awaited launch of Siri, which is “more personal” and leverages advances in AI.
But as Jefferies analysts noted this week, “commercializing and monetizing AI remains difficult,” so Apple’s AI story could also run into memory price issues.
“Not only are AI use cases unclear to consumers, but rapidly rising memory prices will likely make it difficult to economically justify any edge AI applications over the next two years,” Jefferies analyst Edison Lee said Monday. He has a hold rating on the stock.
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