Apple reported record revenue of $114.5 billion for its fiscal fourth quarter, the three months ended September 26, 2026, up 12 percent from a year earlier. It was the first set of results under chief executive John Ternus, who took over from Tim Cook on September 1, 2026, and it paired a record top line with a cautious outlook on holiday-quarter margins.

The quarter in numbers

The headline figures came from Apple's earnings release filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on November 2, 2026. iPhone revenue rose 17 percent to $57.6 billion, a September-quarter record even though the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max went on sale only on September 18, leaving about nine days of sales in the period. Services, Apple's software, App Store and subscriptions arm, reached $31.6 billion. Mac brought in $10.8 billion and iPad $6.2 billion, while Wearables, Home and Accessories slipped to $8.3 billion from $9.0 billion a year earlier.

Net income was $30.7 billion and diluted earnings per share were $2.10, up 14 percent. Gross margin came in at 47.9 percent, which Apple said included a benefit of about 1 percentage point from tariff refunds. For the full fiscal year, revenue was $479 billion, up from $416 billion in fiscal 2025. The board declared a dividend of $0.27 a share, payable November 16, 2026 to holders of record as of November 12.

Not every line rose. iPad revenue fell to $6.2 billion from $7.0 billion a year earlier, and Wearables, Home and Accessories dropped to $8.3 billion from $9.0 billion, a reminder that outside the iPhone and Services, Apple's smaller product lines can shrink in a given quarter. The growth came from the two that matter most to the model: the iPhone, still more than half of revenue, and Services, which carries much higher margins than any piece of hardware. That mix is why a record top line and a looming margin squeeze can share the same report.

If you are new to parsing a quarterly report, our guide on how to read a company earnings report walks through revenue, EPS and guidance line by line.

A new chief executive, a familiar playbook

Ternus joined Apple in 2001, led hardware engineering from 2013, and became senior vice president for hardware engineering in 2021 before succeeding Cook, who moved into the role of executive chairman. The transition was announced in April and took effect on September 1.

"Today, Apple is proud to report a September quarter revenue record of $114.5 billion, up 12 percent from a year ago," Ternus said in the release. Chief financial officer Kevan Parekh pointed to the cash the business threw off: Apple generated $28 billion in operating cash flow during the quarter and returned $28 billion to shareholders through dividends and buybacks, keeping the capital-return machine Cook built running at full speed.

The holiday quarter and the memory problem

The guidance is where the report turned cautious. On the earnings call, Parekh said Apple expects revenue in the December quarter to grow 7 to 10 percent year over year, with a gross margin of 45 to 46 percent, down from the 47.9 percent just reported. Services revenue is guided to grow 8 to 9 percent.

The main reason for the thinner margin is the cost of memory chips, which have climbed sharply as demand for the components that feed artificial-intelligence data centers squeezes supply. "What we're seeing with memory pricing right now is unprecedented," Ternus said on the call. Parekh said memory costs are expected "to continue to be a challenge for us as we look in the December quarter," and that the margin guidance also carries some costs tied to the rollout of Apple's new Siri AI. He described the revenue guidance as the company's best view of constrained supply.

What the numbers do and do not show

The record revenue and the 17 percent jump in iPhone sales are real and sit in a filed document, not a slide. So is the margin squeeze that comes next. The two sit uneasily together: Apple is selling more than ever, yet the parts going into its best-selling product are getting more expensive at a pace management calls unprecedented.

That tension is the story for the December quarter, not the record just set. A 45 to 46 percent gross margin would still be high for a hardware company, and Services, which carries far higher margins than devices, keeps growing at a high-single-digit rate. But a two-point drop in gross margin on roughly $140 billion of holiday-quarter revenue is a large number in dollar terms, and it is being driven by a cost Apple does not control.

Apple is one of the largest holdings in most US stock-index funds, so its margin math reaches far beyond its own shareholders. For a sense of why a company's size, not its share price, determines that weight, see what is market capitalization.

It is also worth separating the one-off from the ongoing. The 47.9 percent gross margin just reported included about a percentage point of benefit from tariff refunds, a help that may not repeat. The memory-cost pressure, by contrast, is the kind of input squeeze that lasts as long as AI demand keeps the market tight. Parekh framed the revenue guidance as the company's best view of constrained supply, language that points to a holiday quarter shaped as much by what Apple can get and at what cost as by what customers want to buy.

What to watch

The figures to track into the new year are the December-quarter gross margin against the 45 to 46 percent guide, how far memory costs climb, and whether Services growth holds in the high-single digits as devices face cost pressure. The comparison set is Apple's own peers this earnings season, from Amazon's AWS quarter to the rest of big tech, all wrestling with the same AI-driven cost of components. Apple reports its fiscal first quarter, covering the holidays, in late January 2027. Everything above is reported fact and attributed guidance, not a view on the stock.