Apple Inc.

Apple's cost narrative has shifted from tariffs to memory pricing, with the company now treating tariff refunds as a credit in its margins. In the June quarter, Apple's gross margin of 50.1% included about two percentage points of tariff refund benefit, while the September quarter guide steps down roughly 160 basis points, a decline the CFO attributes almost entirely to higher memory costs. Management notes that the DRAM market is served primarily by three suppliers, and Apple has already raised prices on iPad and Mac in response to what the CEO called a "hundred-year flood" in memory pricing. Despite supply constraints, Apple posted $109.4 billion in June quarter revenue, up 16%, with Mac sales up 29% to $10.4 billion, and guided September quarter revenue growth to 9%-11%.

Dick's Sporting Goods shares are plummeting after the retailer lowered its full-year outlook amid weakness at its recently acquired Foot Locker unit. Apple shares are slightly lower as the tech giant prepares to launch a new version of its Mac mini desktop computer for the first time in almost two years, according to people familiar with the matter. SpaceX shares are higher in the premarket after Elon Musk said the company's first AI satellites, powered by Nvidia chips, will initially launch in the fourth quarter of next year and hit significant scale in 2028.

Apple booked $6 million of pre-tax profit per employee in Ireland last year, according to new EU-mandated country-by-country disclosures reported by the Financial Times. A quarter of Apple's global pre-tax profits in the year to September 2025 were booked through Irish entities employing about 3% of its workforce, while Apple paid Ireland $17 billion in taxes, or 40% of its $43 billion worldwide corporate income tax bill. The figure was inflated by the EU's top court ordering Apple in 2024 to pay 13 billion in back taxes after ruling Ireland had granted it unlawful aid that produced an effective rate below 1%. By comparison, Apple booked $51,000 of pre-tax profit per employee in Germany, where it paid $153 million, or 0.3% of its total, and Microsoft booked 38% of its global pre-tax profit in Ireland last year, more than $7 million per employee.

Samsung Electronics is likely to return to the top of the global smartphone market in 2026, overtaking Apple, amid heavy market pressure from memory shortages and rising chip prices. Counterpoint Research expects global smartphone shipments to shrink by as much as 14.3 percent this year, while Samsung shipments are still forecast to grow 0.8 percent, bucking the overall market. A lead analyst at Counterpoint said Samsung's key advantages come from its ability to produce components in-house, a product lineup spanning multiple market tiers, and strong relationships with mobile carriers and retailers. Chinese manufacturers that rely on the budget segment are likely to be hit hardest, with some brands possibly seeing shipments fall by as much as 34 percent, and Oppo has already begun scaling back its OnePlus brand business.

OpenAI rolled out support on Thursday for controlling Apple's iMessage service via ChatGPT on the Mac, a move that could raise privacy concerns for the iPhone maker. The new feature lets ChatGPT read, write, and send text messages, search through messages, and get summaries and other information about conversations from the Apple Messages app. OpenAI stressed that the integration requires user consent, runs locally on the Mac, and uses existing operating system tools such as AppleScript and Accessibility, with several opt-in menus and a Full Disk Access setting required. The move comes amid broader tension between the two companies, as Apple sued OpenAI last month accusing the AI provider of stealing information about upcoming products. The feature also encroaches on the territory of Apple's upcoming Siri AI, which is expected to comb through users' messages and other on-device content.

Qualcomm shares have declined 30.6% over the past 12 weeks as handset weakness and margin pressure challenge the company's growth in automotive and data center businesses. Qualcomm CDMA Technologies handset revenues fell 20% year over year to $5.09 billion in the fiscal third quarter of 2026, and the company expects fiscal 2026 QCT Android handset revenues to decline about 20%, with an annual earnings impact exceeding $1.50 per share. Apple has introduced its first internally designed cellular modem, the C1, in the iPhone 16e, and Qualcomm expects its share of the upcoming iPhone launch to be materially below its prior 20% assumption. QCT automotive revenues jumped 61% year over year to a record $1.59 billion, and Qualcomm raised its fiscal 2026 exit outlook for annualized automotive sales to about $7 billion. Two custom silicon engagements with global-scale hyperscalers are expected to begin generating revenues in the December 2026 quarter, with Qualcomm targeting $5 billion of data center revenues in fiscal 2027 and $15 billion in fiscal 2029, though initial custom silicon revenues are expected to dilute QCT gross margin by 1.5 to 2 percentage points. Qualcomm trades at 4.0 times trailing 12-month enterprise value-to-sales, below its five-year median of 4.1 times, and its 15.9 times forward 12-month price-to-earnings multiple is also below the five-year median of 16.6 times.

Apple has agreed to a simplified App Store commission structure in the European Union as part of its response to the Digital Markets Act. Regulators in Germany are requiring changes to Apple's app tracking transparency consent rules, which is expected to alter how iOS apps request and manage user tracking permissions. These regulatory moves target long standing antitrust concerns and could affect Apple's services business model and its relationship with app developers in key international markets.

Apple's App Store commission revenue in the U.S. reportedly dropped 18% in 2026, according to app analytics company Appfigures, as legal challenges from Epic Games and the European Commission pressure the company's Services business. Sensor Tower data shared with the Financial Times showed a 6% drop in U.S. consumer spending in the App Store in the second quarter of 2026, compared with a 9% rise a year earlier, while global consumer spending grew just 3% year-over-year versus 13% in the prior-year period. Apple's Services revenue of $30.7 billion in the June quarter fell about $1 billion short of Wall Street expectations, and shares dipped roughly 7% after the earnings call. Apple CFO Kevan Parekh attributed the slowdown partly to foreign exchange and changes to the App Store business model in certain countries, including a U.S. court ruling impacting link-out transactions. The company is now seeking tiered linked-out commissions of 15% for ordinary apps, 10% for certain programs, and 5% for small-business developers, while the Supreme Court is expected to consider Apple's appeal in the Epic Games case this October.

Apple has announced a major restructuring of App Store fees in the European Union, setting the commission for apps distributed through third-party app stores and website channels at 5%, as part of efforts to resolve disputes with European regulators over the Digital Markets Act. The new structure will take effect on October 1, 2026. Apps downloaded through the App Store and using Apple's payment system will pay a 26% commission, while apps downloaded from the App Store but using their own payment system will pay 20%, and apps that direct users outside the app to complete payments externally will pay 15%. Some developers may see fees reduced by as much as half if they join programs defined by Apple. The new structure will replace the previous, more complex system and marks a significant shift from the App Store's traditional business model, which charged commissions of 30% or 15% and required iPhone apps to be installed only through the App Store. This change stems from the Digital Markets Act passed by the European Commission in 2022, which requires large technology companies to open their platforms to greater third-party competition. Europe is currently the only region where users can install software on iPhones directly from websites, while Japan and Brazil also require Apple to support third-party app stores. Apple also faces pressure in the United States from litigation with Epic Games and has proposed charging a 15% commission on purchases resulting from link-out payments in the US. Morgan Stanley noted that in the most recent quarter, Apple did not mention the App Store as a primary driver of Services revenue growth, the first time since 2023. Meanwhile, Kevan Parekh, Apple's chief financial officer, acknowledged that the App Store business has been affected by a slowdown in mobile gaming and business model adjustments in some countries.

David Tepper's Appaloosa Management disclosed three especially large positions in its second-quarter filing, and at today's prices the setups differ across Apple, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, and CoreWeave. Apple trades at a P/E of about 40 after fiscal Q3 revenue hit $109.42 billion, up 16.4% year over year, but gross margin got a roughly 2-point one-time boost from tariff refunds and Cook warned of a '100-year flood on the memory pricing' that will pressure September margins. TSMC's Q2 revenue rose 36% year over year to $40.20 billion, EPS came in at $4.31 versus $3.89 expected, and management guided full-year 2026 growth slightly above 40% in USD while raising capex to $60 billion to $64 billion. CoreWeave's Q2 revenue doubled to $2.575 billion with a $104 billion revenue backlog, but Q2 capex hit $6.42 billion, free cash flow was negative $5.74 billion, net loss widened to $626 million, and debt-to-equity sits at 8.94, making the risk/reward skewed against holders at $105.26.

Qualcomm has fallen 35% from its May 2026 highs, and the market is pricing it like a company in decline following tough quarterly results and weakness in smartphones. QCT handset revenue dropped 20% last quarter as smartphone OEMs cut chipset purchases and worked down inventory amid memory supply constraints, while Apple is expected to use Qualcomm modems in only around 20% of iPhones in 2026 and none by 2027. Fiscal Q3 adjusted earnings fell to $2.21, about 20% year over year, with Q4 guidance pointing to further softness, but the stock still trades at just about 16x forward earnings on projected fiscal 2027 earnings of $10.20 per share. Qualcomm is targeting more than $15 billion in annual data-center revenue by fiscal 2029, with its AI200, AI250, and AI300 inference systems, a 200 MW agreement with HUMAIN starting in 2026, and a multi-generation CPU deal with Meta for the Dragonfly C1000 expected to enter production in 2028. The completed $2.4 billion Alphawave acquisition further strengthens this strategy by giving Qualcomm high-speed connectivity, custom silicon, and chiplet capabilities.