Apple CEO Tim Cook gestures as he leaves after a business leaders’ reception with the U.S. president on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos on January 21, 2026.
Fabrice Cofrini | Afp | Getty Images
Apple is expected to report its first-quarter financial results Thursday after the bell.
Here’s what Wall Street expects, according to LSEG consensus estimates:
- PES: $2.67
- Income: $138.48 billion
Apple’s fiscal first quarter ended in December, and the company previously indicated that it expected many people to buy iPhones during the holiday season.
The company said it expects overall revenue growth of between 10% and 12% in the quarter and a similar double-digit growth rate for iPhone sales. This would indicate that Apple is expecting between $136.73 billion and $139.22 billion for the first full quarter of iPhone 17 sales.
This has led analysts to be optimistic that the company will post a beat on Thursday. Regardless, investors sold the stock, and it is down nearly 11% since its Dec. 2 peak.
Analysts will likely press Apple management on operating costs and how much the company pays for components such as memory and storage, whose prices have soared due to artificial intelligence-driven technology. 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 manage rising component costs during what it sees as a major growth cycle. Chief Financial Officer Kevan Parekh said in October that while the company was seeing a slight tailwind in memory pricing, he downplayed it as “nothing really of note.”
“We do not believe the Street has sufficiently incorporated the impact of 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 price target of $315.
Woodring added that he doesn’t expect the memory price spike to affect Apple this quarter, but that could change as the year goes on.
“We don’t think consensus has yet adjusted to the better-than-expected iPhone 17 cycle, but at the same time they have not adjusted to higher operating 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 announcement that he chose Google Gemini will run part of its Apple Intelligence software, replacing some AI models built in-house.
Cook may also mention a highly anticipated Siri launch this year, it’s “more personal” and takes advantage of advances in AI.
But even Apple’s AI story could run into problems related to memory pricing, as Jeffries analysts noted this week that “commercialization and monetization of AI remains difficult.”
“Not only is the use case for AI unclear to consumers, but rapidly rising memory prices would likely make cutting-edge AI applications harder to financially justify over the next couple of years,” Jefferies analyst Edison Lee wrote Monday. It has a sustaining note on the title.
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