“A services annuity wrapped in a hardware company — with China as the swing factor.”
Editorial note · AI-assisted · updated 2026-08-26Strong business, priced for a lot of it — 28 of 36 checks passed.
each axis counts checks passed · tap an axis to jump to its chapter
What you pay today for what the business produces — measured against this company's own history and its peers, never a universal rule.
Expensive against its own history and its sector — you're paying up for what you get.
→The market is paying +36% more per dollar of earnings than its own ten-year norm — expectations are elevated, so more has to go right.
→Every point is that year's average price against its earnings — the long view of what the market has been willing to pay.
Value asks what you pay for each dollar of earnings, sales or cash the business produces. A high multiple isn't automatically bad — fast growers earn theirs — but a price far above the company's own history means the market expects a lot to go right. We compare each multiple to this company's own past and to its sector, never to a universal rule.
| ✕ | Cheaper than its own history (earnings) | 37.79 vs 27.74 |
| ✕ | Cheaper than its sector (earnings) | 37.79 vs 22.00 |
| ✕ | Cheaper than its own history (sales) | 10.44 vs 6.33 |
| ✕ | Pays you real cash | 2.8% vs 3.0% |
| ✕ | Cheap on enterprise value | 29.26 vs 14.00 |
| ✕ | Price isn't outrunning growth | PEG 5.49 |
What the company has actually reported — is it selling more, and is more of it becoming profit?
The business is genuinely growing — revenue +14.2% in the last year, and it's consistent.
◌ dashed bar = Q4 derived from FY − Q1 − Q2 − Q3 (the SEC never receives a Q4 filing)
→Sales grew 14% over the last twelve months — and it's accelerating (+14% last year vs +2%/yr over three years).
◌ dashed bar = Q4 derived from FY − Q1 − Q2 − Q3 (the SEC never receives a Q4 filing)
→Profit rose 30% to $112.0B over the last twelve months.
Growth here is what the company has actually reported to the SEC — not a forecast. We look at the last year, the three-year pace, whether growth is speeding up or slowing down, and whether it's been consistent rather than one lucky year. Hatched bars are fourth quarters we derived from annual filings (companies file a full-year 10-K rather than a Q4 report).
| ✓ | Revenue grew last year | 14.2% vs 0.0% |
| ✕ | Growing faster than the sector | 1.8% vs 5.0% |
| ✓ | Profits grew last year | 29.9% vs 0.0% |
| ✓ | Profit growth beats the sector | 6.9% vs 6.0% |
| ✓ | Growth is speeding up, not slowing | 1y 14.2% vs 3y 1.8% |
| ✓ | Growth is consistent, not lumpy | revenue up in 4 of last 5 years |
Source: SEC filings — segment disclosures (XBRL notes)
→Still an iPhone company: $54.3B of $109.4B last quarter (50%). Services ($30.7B) is the diversification bet — higher margin, stickier.
Source: SEC filings — segment disclosures (XBRL notes)
→Greater China: $18.8B last quarter vs $45.8B in the Americas — the region every Apple bear case starts with.
Where the professionals think this is going: forecast growth, estimate revisions, and price targets.
No analyst coverage — so we show the reported growth trend below instead of a forecast.
→Pure arithmetic: extending the three-year pace (+2%/yr) puts revenue near $431.4B by 2027. No business grows in a straight line — analyst estimates and company guidance will replace this when coverage lands.
This axis will score analyst forecasts — expected growth, estimate revisions, price targets — and structured guidance from the company's own filings. Neither is wired up for this stock yet, so rather than invent a neutral score we show the one thing that IS knowable: what happens if the recent pace simply continues. Outlined bars are arithmetic, not a prediction — real businesses accelerate, stall and mean-revert.
| – | Revenue expected to grow | no analyst coverage |
| – | Profits expected to grow | no analyst coverage |
| – | Expected to outgrow the sector | no analyst coverage |
| – | Analysts are getting more positive | no analyst coverage |
| – | Priced below what analysts think | no analyst coverage |
| – | The growth isn't a one-year blip | no analyst coverage |
Whether the growth makes real money — margins, returns on capital, and whether profits turn into cash.
Rare profitability: margins and returns on capital are well above its peers.
→Gross margin has widened by 4 points since 2022. After all costs, 27¢ of every sales dollar survives.
→Yes — operating cash flow runs at 114% of reported profit, so the earnings are backed by real cash.
→ROE of 127% but ROCE of only 61% — a chunk of those shareholder returns is manufactured with leverage, not operations.
→Of $416.2B in sales, $195.2B survives production costs, $133.1B survives running the company, and $112.0B — 27¢ of every dollar — reaches the bottom line.
→24¢ of every sales dollar becomes free cash — down 5 points since 2022.
→The biggest claim on each sales dollar is R&D at 8% of revenue — that's the price of staying in this game.
→Operating profit grew faster than sales in 4 of the last 5 years — each new dollar of revenue is more profitable than the last.
Quality asks whether the growth makes real money. Margins show how much of each sale survives costs; return on equity shows what shareholders earn on their capital; and the profit-to-cash comparison catches companies whose accounting profits never turn into actual cash.
| ✓ | Better gross margins than peers | 48.7% vs 40.0% |
| ✓ | Runs leaner than peers | 33.2% vs 12.0% |
| ✓ | Actually profitable | TTM net income 1.29e+11 |
| ✓ | Earns well on shareholders' money | 119.9% vs 12.0% |
| ✓ | Earns well on all assets | 33.6% vs 5.0% |
| ✓ | Profits are cash, not accounting | 1.14 vs 0.80 |
The balance sheet stress test: could this company survive a bad year?
A fortress balance sheet — this company can survive a very bad year.
→Debt of $82.3B against $39.5B in cash (0.8× shareholders' equity). Earnings cover the interest bill 39 times over.
→The company's own capital has grown from $74.1B (2023) to $107.5B — the business is building value, not consuming it.
Health asks one question: can this company survive a bad year? We check whether near-term bills are covered, whether debt is modest and shrinking, whether earnings comfortably pay the interest, and — for loss-makers — how many years of cash are left at the current burn rate.
| ✓ | Can pay near-term bills | 1.00 vs 1.00 |
| ✓ | Debt isn't dominating | 0.77 vs 1.00 |
| ✓ | Debt trending the right way | D/E 0.77 now vs 1.64 five years ago |
| ✓ | Earnings cover the interest | 39.37 vs 5.00 |
| ✓ | The engine generates cash | 1.47e+11 vs 0.00 |
| ✓ | Self-funding | TTM FCF 1.37e+11 |
What the market is doing about all of the above — the trend, and whether the crowd agrees with the fundamentals.
The market agrees: this stock is in a healthy uptrend on every horizon.
Chart by TradingView
→Price is above its 200-day average (+15%), and it has beaten the market over the last year (+42% vs +21%). On the chart, price above the shaded cloud = healthy trend; inside = indecision; below = downtrend.
Momentum is what the market is doing about all of the above: is the price in an uptrend, is it beating the index, and how far is it from its high? It says nothing about the business itself — it tells you whether the crowd currently agrees with the fundamentals.
| ✓ | In an uptrend | 324.70 vs 282.89 |
| ✓ | Trend structure is healthy | 313.37 vs 282.89 |
| ✓ | Rising recently | 4.7% vs 0.0% |
| ✓ | Beating the market (short) | 4.7% vs 1.9% |
| ✓ | Beating the market (long) | 41.9% vs 21.0% |
| ✓ | Not in a deep hole | -4.4% from 52-week high |
How much cash actually flows back to owners — dividends, buybacks, and whether the share count truly falls.
Pays reliably and affordably — but at a token yield, this is a gesture, not income.
→$106.1B returned last year against $12.9B of stock issued to employees — the returns outweigh the dilution 8.3-to-1.
→The count shrank 2.6% last year — buybacks are outrunning stock compensation.
→Up from $0.80 to $1.03 per share over 5 years — the cheque keeps growing.
→At today's price the yield is 0.3%.
→Comfortable: 14% of profits and 16% of free cash flow go out as dividends — inside the 75%/90% comfort lines.
A company can trumpet billions in buybacks while quietly issuing nearly as much stock to employees. What matters to you is the net effect: is the share count actually falling? If not, the 'return' is mostly recycling.
| ✓ | Pays a dividend | 1.54e+10 paid last fiscal year |
| ✕ | Meaningful yield | yield 0.3% |
| ✓ | Growing payout | 3.9% vs 0.0% |
| ✓ | Reliable payer | paid 10/10 years, worst change -0.3% |
| ✓ | Affordable from profits | payout 12.0% of profits |
| ✓ | Covered by real cash | 11.3% of free cash flow |
What the people running the company do with their own shares — reported to the SEC within two days, classified so pay-plumbing doesn't masquerade as conviction.
→No open-market buying, and $160M of selling across 6 months. Selling alone is a weak signal — much of it is pre-scheduled — but the absence of buying tells you no insider saw the price as a bargain.
| Date | Insider | Role | Type | Shares | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-08-25 | Jennifer Newstead | SVP, GC and Secretary | SELL | 1,439 | $447457.05 |
| 2026-08-18 | Jennifer Newstead | SVP, GC and Secretary | SELL | 1,439 | $442478.11 |
| 2026-08-11 | Jennifer Newstead | SVP, GC and Secretary | SELL | 1,439 | $442852.25 |
| 2026-06-16 | Ben Borders | Principal Accounting Officer | SELL | 116 | $34236.24 |
| 2026-06-15 | Jennifer Newstead | SVP, GC and Secretary | tax | 16,238 | $5M |
| 2026-06-15 | Ben Borders | Principal Accounting Officer | tax | 124 | $36756.08 |
| 2026-05-27 | Arthur D Levinson | Director | SELL | 50,000 | $16M |
| 2026-05-08 | Ben Borders | Principal Accounting Officer | SELL | 1,274 | $369460.00 |
| 2026-05-06 | Arthur D Levinson | Director | SELL | 149,527 | $43M |
| 2026-05-06 | Arthur D Levinson | Director | SELL | 100,473 | $29M |
| 2026-04-23 | Kevan Parekh | Senior Vice President, CFO | SELL | 1,534 | $421850.00 |
| 2026-04-15 | Ben Borders | Principal Accounting Officer | tax | 892 | $237655.56 |
| 2026-04-15 | Kevan Parekh | Senior Vice President, CFO | tax | 4,793 | $1M |
| 2026-04-02 | Deirdre O'Brien | Senior Vice President | SELL | 20,338 | $5M |
Showing 14 of 60 recent filings.
Most insider filings are not trades: stock grants, option exercises and tax withholding are how executives get paid, and gifts are estate planning. The signal lives in open-market transactions — a buy means an insider chose to spend their own cash on the stock. Sells are murkier: many are pre-scheduled 10b5-1 plans set months in advance. That's why the chart counts only open-market activity, and the table labels every row.