The company is set to report results for its fiscal third quarter after the close on Thursday. Apple stock is down 16% year-to-date, with tariff headwinds, iPhone demand, and a lack of a clear AI strategy compared to mega-cap peers weighing on the company.
The tech giant is expected to report revenue of $89.3 billion for the quarter, and earnings per share of $1.43.
Wall Street analysts say that progress on AI, such as any update on a rumored deal with Perplexity, would go a long way in soothing investors’ fears that the iPhone maker is losing ground in the AI race. Tariffs are also still in focus, with analysts watching for updates on how the trade war has impacted the company.
Apple will report results shortly after 4:30 p.m. ET on Thursday, with a call scheduled for 5 p.m. ET.
Apple faces fierce competition in China.
We’ll be looking closely at how Apple performed in China, where it’s faced sales pressure in recent years from local smartphone makers.
CEO Tim Cook has called China “the most competitive market in the world.” Apple competes against Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi, and others in the region.
Wall Street analysts are expecting Greater China revenue of $15.19 billion.
Don’t be surprised if Tim Cook talks up Apple’s US investments, a recent trend on company earnings calls.
Apple has made multiple announcements around US investments since Donald Trump was re-elected.
The latest is the coming opening of the Apple Manufacturing Academy in Detroit.
“Beginning August 19, Apple, in partnership with Michigan State University, will host small and medium-sized businesses from across the country in Detroit for various workshops with Apple experts,” the company announced. “The courses are designed to help American companies transition to advanced manufacturing by implementing artificial intelligence and smart manufacturing techniques.”
Apple doesn’t disclose its salary info publicly. But to get a sense of what Apple can pay for various roles, the federal filings they make when hiring outside of the US can give clues to its pay ranges. While it’s not a complete picture, as the data only refers to foreign hires and doesn’t include equity or other benefits employees can receive on top of their base pay, it’s an interesting window into the company’s comp.
For example, Apple’s salary filings show a machine learning engineer or researcher can take home as much as $312,200, while a human interface designer can earn as much as $468,500.
Apple stock is about flat headed toward the earnings report
We’re about 30 minutes out from the closing bell, shortly after which Apple will report last quarter’s earnings.
Shares of Apple have been fairly flat today in the lead-up to the report, falling 0.17%. Over the last five trading days, the stock is down 2.73%.
If investors view the report positively, Apple could join the party started by Microsoft and Meta yesterday, both of which jumped at least 9% in after-hours trading after results were released.
Price hikes aren’t off the table for Apple
Customers trying out Apple’s iPhone 15 at an Apple store in Shanghai, China.
CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images
In addition to further insight on AI strategy, analysts may be listening to the earnings call for clues on potential price increases. While Apple has held off on raising iPhone prices, Jefferies analysts expect the company to hike the price of some iPhone 17 models by $50 when the lineup is released to help cover tariff costs.
Jefferies assumes 40% of the iPhone 17 will be made in China for US consumers. If the average cost to build it goes up by $20 to $25, a $50 bump in price “may barely cover the above cost increases, the analysts wrote.
Other analysts, like EMARKETER’s Jacob Bourne, said iPhones could get more expensive depending on whether they’re made in China or India.
An American-made iPhone is virtually impossible, Business Insider’s Peter Kafka wrote. It certainly won’t happen without an astronomical boost in price, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives previously said. He estimated that it could be priced at $3,500.
Not everyone is as worried about Apple’s AI strategy
Morgan Stanley analyst Erik Woodring doesn’t think AI is as crucial to Apple’s strategy as other analysts argue.
“We continue to believe that investors do not fully appreciate Apple’s AI intentions — most often comparing what Apple needs to do in AI with what META, GOOGL, AMZN, and others are doing,” Woodring said. “Of course, we acknowledge that Apple might not have fully finalized their own approach to AI, but we also believe that anyone thinking Apple will acquire an AI-powered search engine to ‘solve their AI shortfalls’ is misguided.”
He continued: “We recognize the uncertainty around AI means Apple is not near the top of the “AI Beneficiaries” pecking order today, but Apple’s core business (selling products and services) is not materially threatened by AI in the near term, and as a result, Apple still has time to right the AI ship.”
Morgan Stanley still has an “Overweight” rating on the stock with a price target of $235.
“Watching this 4th Industrial Revolution race go by at 100 miles an hour”
Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks before the start of the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference at its headquarters in Cupertino, California.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Wedbush’s Dan Ives is another analyst who sees quick progress on AI as crucial for Apple. He said the firm is in danger of falling permanently behind in the AI race if it doesn’t change course soon.
“In the AI Revolution there is an arms race going on between Big Tech stalwarts Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, OpenAI, Oracle and many others to monetize the biggest tech trend in the last 50 years…..while Apple is at a highway rest stop on a bench watching this 4th Industrial Revolution race go by at 100 miles an hour,” Ives wrote earlier this month.
Ives said Apple should jump on the Perplexity deal and that if it acts quickly, the company can still catch up to competitors. He said such a move would be a “no-brainer” for Apple.
Wedbush has a $270 price target for Apple stock.
The stakes are high after Wall Street was underwhelmed by Apple’s developers conference
After setbacks and delays to its expected AI-driven Siri, Wall Street was eager to hear at WWDC 2025 about the company’s plans to stay competitive in the AI arms race.
While Apple did introduce some new Apple Intelligence features, like AI-powered personalized shortcuts on Mac, it also reiterated that it “needed more time to reach our high-quality bar” and more will be launched in the coming year.
The keynote mainly focused on “Liquid Glass,” a glass-like software design coming to Apple’s gadget lineup this fall.
Watch for updates on Apple’s AI strategy
Getty/NurPhoto
Investors think Apple is behind on its AI efforts and will be watching to see if CEO Tim Cook signals any shifts in strategy.
Melius Research analyst Ben Reitzes said to listen for potential updates on the rumored possibility that Apple buys Perplexity AI to help with its upgrade of Siri.
Such a move could send the share price soaring, he said, as the company looks for ways to make its products’ interface smoother for users.
“It does feel like the market would reward Apple for being bolder, which could result in several hundreds of billions in value,” Reitzes wrote in a July 21 note.
Melius has a $240 price target on Apple stock.
Apple is taking a look at its supply chain to deal with tariff-related costs
President Donald Trump’s demand for American-made iPhones has become a tariff headache for Apple. To avoid hefty tariff costs from manufacturing in China, the tech giant is ramping up production in India to make more US iPhones outside the region it once heavily relied on.
Smartphones assembled in India made up 44% of US imports in Q2, a jump from the 13% during the same period in 2024, research firm Canalys estimated in an analysis published on Monday.
“For the June quarter, we do expect the majority of iPhones sold in the US will have India as their country of origin,” CEO Tim Cook said during the May 1 earnings call.
The iPhone maker is also looking for American options for its supply chain. On July 15, it announced a $500 million investment in MP Materials, a US producer of rare earth magnets. The deal was a part of Apple’s initiative to spend $500 billion in the US over the next four years.
How is the trade war affecting profits?
An Apple Store in Shanghai, China.
CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images
In a note earlier this week, Bank of America said its clients would be most interested in Apple’s Q2 and future estimated profit margins for clues about how the company, with its sprawling global supply chains, will be able to navigate the trade war.
BofA analyst Wamsi Mohan says tariffs should have a “meaningful negative impact” on Apple’s profits.
One thing that could counteract a hit to margins, however, is the release of a slimmer iPhone, Mohan said. The company could announce the product, which they would likely sell for a higher price than previous iPhones, in September.
“We expect the slim iPhone to replace the Plus model from last year and be priced $100 higher vs the Plus model,” Mohan wrote.
BofA has a “Buy” rating on Apple stock, and expects it to climb to $235 a share within the next 12 months.
Apple earnings estimates: Wall Street expects $89.3 billion of revenue, $1.43 of EPS
Third quarter
Revenue estimate $89.3 billion
EPS estimate $1.43
Products revenue estimate $62.81 billion
IPhone revenue estimate $40.06 billion
Mac revenue estimate $7.3 billion
IPad revenue estimate $7.07 billion
Wearables, home and accessories estimate $7.78 billion
The group of football-loving would-be assassins abandoned their task at the last minute.
“I’m close to the position. Are you going to cancel the game?” the person codenamed Austria asked their associates on their Signal group at just before 9pm on 15 December 2022, as he lurked near Moraes’s home in Brazil’s capital, Brasília.
“Abort,” replied “Germany”, according to a federal police report.
The cinematic plot, nicknamed Operation Copa 2022 (Operation World Cup 2022) and involving at least six special forces troops, was at the heart of this week’s historic trial of Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro. He was on Thursday sentenced to 27 years in prison for trying to stage a coup after he lost the 2022 election to his leftwing opponent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula.
“[He tried to] annihilate the essential pillars of the democratic rule-of-law state,” said Moraes as he accused Bolsonaro of being the leader of a sprawling conspiracy, which included plans to assassinate Lula and the vice-president-elect, Geraldo Alckmin, to stop them taking power on 1 January 2023.
Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters at a protest this month. Photograph: Luis Nova/AP
Moraes said hitmen had planned to “neutralise” him using “extremely powerful weapons” capable of piercing his bullet-proof car; they also allegedly considered killing Lula during a public event with poison or drugs that would cause organ failure.
“I’m someone who should be really thankful to be alive,” Lula said last year after the alleged poison plot was revealed.
Bolsonaro has denied engineering a coup or being involved in an assassination plot, calling such claims “a little story”.
But Moraes said there was “ample evidence” indicating the far-right politician was aware of Operation World Cup 2022, which the judge said was part of a larger intrigue called Green and Yellow Dagger.
Police investigators said a copy of the blueprint for a “clandestine operation” with “terrorist hallmarks” was printed out in the presidential palace on 6 December 2022 by an army general called Mário Fernandes. At the time Gen Fernandes, who was arrested last year, was a senior official in Bolsonaro’s administration.
“This [plan] wasn’t printed out in a cave. It wasn’t printed out hidden away in a room of terrorists. It was printed out in the presidential palace. It was printed out in the seat of the Brazilian government … at the same moment that president Jair Messias Bolsonaro was there,” Moraes told the court on Tuesday as Bolsonaro’s trial reached its conclusion.
Alexandre de Moraes and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who said he was ‘someone who should be really thankful to be alive’. Photograph: Adriano Machado/Reuters
“The planning is so detailed that it even details the chances of success, what the collateral damage might be, what weaponry should be used,” added Moraes.
A copy of the Green and Yellow Dagger plan, obtained by federal police investigators, suggests plotters planned to use an arsenal that included assault rifles, a belt-fed machine gun and even a Swedish anti-tank weapon, used on the battlefield in Ukraine. “These are weapons of war commonly used by combat groups,” the police report says.
According to the investigators, the plan to assassinate Moraes was aborted only because a court session was delayed – and, more importantly, the commanders of the army and air force refused to endorse Bolsonaro’s coup plot.
Brazil has had more than a dozen coup attempts since it became a republic in 1889 but none, so far as is known, involved a plan to assassinate those being deposed.
The historian Lucas Pedretti said that did not necessarily mean such plots had not existed. Rather, the 2022 plot had come to light because, for the first time in history, the coup plotters had been investigated and put on trial.
Pedretti said the existence of the assassination plan was “shocking, but not so surprising”. The historian, who studies Brazil’s brutal 1964-85 military dictatorship, said the armed forces still promoted internally the idea that the bloody regime was a “necessary and legitimate response” to a supposed communist threat.
Quick Guide
Brazil’s dictatorship 1964-1985
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How did it begin?
Brazil’s leftist president, João Goulart, was toppled in a coup in April 1964. General Humberto Castelo Branco became leader, political parties were banned, and the country was plunged into 21 years of military rule.
The repression intensified under Castelo Branco’s hardline successor, Artur da Costa e Silva, who took power in 1967. He was responsible for a notorious decree called AI-5 that gave him wide ranging dictatorial powers and kicked off the so-called “anos de chumbo” (years of lead), a bleak period of tyranny and violence which would last until 1974.
What happened during the dictatorship?
Supporters of Brazil’s 1964-1985 military regime – including Jair Bolsonaro – credit it with bringing security and stability to the South American country and masterminding a decade-long economic “miracle”.
It also pushed ahead with several pharaonic infrastructure projects including the still unfinished Trans-Amazonian highway and the eight-mile bridge across Rio’s Guanabara bay.
But the regime, while less notoriously violent than those in Argentina and Chile, was also responsible for murdering or killing hundreds of its opponents and imprisoning thousands more. Among those jailed and tortured were Brazil’s first female president, Dilma Rousseff, then a leftwing rebel.
It was also a period of severe censorship. Some of Brazil’s best-loved musicians – including Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque and Caetano Veloso – went into exile in Europe, writing songs about their enforced departures.
How did it end?
Political exiles began returning to Brazil in 1979 after an amnesty law was passed that began to pave the way for the return of democracy.
But the pro-democracy “Diretas Já” (Direct elections now!) movement only hit its stride in 1984 with a series of vast and historic street rallies in cities such as Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Belo Horizonte.
Civilian rule returned the following year and a new constitution was introduced in 1988. The following year Brazil held its first direct presidential election in nearly three decades.
“And this is particularly true in the case of the special forces,” he said, referring to the army group to which the men accused of plotting to kill Moraes, Lula and Alckmin belonged.
Police believe the men involved in the Moraes murder plot were special forces operatives known as the “kids pretos” or “black cap boys” because of the black caps they wore. Pedretti said the group, set up during the cold war, still maintained the same “enemy elimination mindset”.
“In Bolsonaro’s attempted coup, spearheaded by him and his generals, they simply put that logic and the expertise of the ‘kids pretos’ at the service of the coup-mongering political project,” Pedretti said.
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond has finally received a release date from Nintendo, following months of speculation.
As revealed at today’s Nintendo Direct livestream, Metroid Prime 4 will release on 4th December across both Switch and Switch 2.
The announcement came with a fresh look at the game, including Samus on a motorbike. Yes, you read that correctly.
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond – Nintendo Direct 9.12.2025Watch on YouTube
Back in June, an advertisement for the game was seen on the London Underground stating the game was “out now”, though this was swiftly debunked by Nintendo.
Still, while the game officially had a 2025 launch window, rumours of a delay intensified over the summer, though Nintendo remained committed to a release this year.
Metroid Prime 4 is the long-awaited latest entry in Nintendo’s sci-fi series, that once again follows bounty hunter Samus Aran in first-person. This time, though, she’s got psychic powers.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to wait until WBD splits in half — to form Warner Bros. (HBO Max and studios) and Discovery Global (TV networks) — a transaction CEO David Zaslav says is on track to be done in April 2026? The WBD separation is designed to boost the value of its streaming and studios businesses by carving off the declining TV arm. Paramount Skydance could make a play for the standalone Warner Bros. without assuming the baggage (including the lion’s share of WBD debt) of the entity that will house CNN, TNT, TBS, Discovery and other nets. And through a deal for standalone Warner Bros., Paramount Skydance would still get its hands on the key growth driver going forward: HBO Max. (The mind reels at what a fused HBO Max-Paramount+ might be rebranded.)
One possibility is that a Larry Ellison-backed M&A play for WBD has been part of the Skydance strategy all along. The idea would be “to consolidate media assets during a period of industry-wide instability and build a conglomerate with a streaming-first focus wrapped with TV and film studios and potentially a larger linear television portfolio,” MoffettNathanson analyst Robert Fishman wrote in a research note Thursday.
And the advantage of moving now is that it could “preempt a potential bidding war for only the Warner Bros. Streaming & Studios assets post-split,” Fishman noted. “By acting now, [Paramount Skydance] positions itself to secure the entire company before rivals can cherry-pick the most attractive assets.”
Indeed, prior to news of Paramount Skydance’s prepping a bid for WBD, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, Wells Fargo media analyst Steven Cahall issued a note that pegged the future standalone Warner Bros. as “an attractive M&A candidate” — with Netflix “the most compelling buyer,” and other potential suitors including Amazon, Apple, Comcast, Sony and Paramount Skydance.
Regarding the separated Warner Bros. streaming and studios biz, Cahall wrote, “This will be the only large IP asset for sale at a time when most studios/streamers have big aspirations.” The analyst acknowledged that Netflix has not historically made any big M&A deals. But he opined a Netflix takeover of Warner Bros. had a number of benefits, including being able to “kickstart” a theatrical strategy for the streamer, help it scale video games and “most importantly [provide] premium content to members.” Cahall calculated the value of standalone Warner Bros. at around $65 billion.
To be sure, any Paramount Skydance offer for Warner Bros. Discovery would face big financial and regulatory obstacles — arguably much greater than Skydance-Paramount merger.
After Warner Bros. Discovery shares zoomed up 29% on the potential Paramount bid, WBD now has a market value of $40 billion. When adding in debt (minus cash and equivalents), the enterprise value of Warner Bros. Discovery is now about $71 billion. And that is a far bigger price than the Ellisons paid to swing Skydance-Paramount.
“We think the high debt leverage of WBD is an impediment to a high bid for WBD’s shares,” Kenneth Leon, director of industry and equity research at CFRA Research, said in a Sept. 11 note. He suggested that, even if Paramount Skydance wins a deal for Warner Bros. Discovery as a whole, it may “be only interested in the businesses that will become Warner Bros. and not see meaningful value creation from the Discovery Global media portfolio.”
But MoffettNathanson’s Fishman speculated that Paramount Skydance could see big benefits by pooling its TV business with WBD’s. “Overall, we would expect material cost synergies from the overlapping cable networks,” he wrote — i.e., layoffs. Fishman added there there are “presumably a high level of synergies from combining CBS News with CNN plus the long-term existing partnership between CBS and Turner with the NCAA’s March Madness Final Four.”
Then there’s the question of whether a Paramount-WBD tie-up could get regulatory approval, as it represents a more horizontal combination of two media giants than Skydance-Paramount. Skydance was largely a production company, with limited overlap with Paramount Global.
Already coming out against the notion of a combined Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery was Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), who wrote in a post on X Thursday that such a media merger “must be blocked as a dangerous concentration of power.”
The Trump administration OK’d the Skydance-Paramount merger, after Skydance made key concessions to the FCC including hiring a CBS News ombudsman to vet complaints of “bias” and promising to never bring back diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at the company. But Warren and others have alleged Paramount Global’s $16 million payment to Trump to settle his lawsuit (alleging CBS News’ “60 Minutes” deceptively edited an interview with then-VP Kamala Harris) was a “bribe” to get Trump’s blessing on their deal while Warren also called out Trump’s claim that the new owners of Paramount promised $20 million worth of free advertising. “Remember when Trump announced a multimillion-dollar secret deal with CEO David Ellison? And then — shocker — Trump approved Ellison buying CBS/Paramount,” Warren wrote in the post. “Now, Ellison wants to take over CNN/Warner Bros.” (Skydance and Paramount said they complied with all U.S. laws throughout the merger process, including antibribery laws.)
Whatever scenario ultimately unfolds, Zaslav for one seemingly will see his wish for media biz consolidation realized.
After Trump was elected to a second term in November 2024, Zaslav expressed optimism the new administration would facilitate industry M&A. Trump 2.0, Zaslav said, “may offer a pace of change and an opportunity for consolidation that may be quite different” and that it may “provide a real positive and accelerated impact on this industry that’s needed.”
