Apple posts record quarter in new CEO John Ternus's first earnings call

Apple reported record fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of $114.5 billion on Monday, up 12 percent from a year earlier, in the first earnings call led solely by John Ternus since he succeeded Tim Cook as chief executive two months ago.

iPhone revenue reached $57.6 billion for the September quarter, a company record and up about 17 percent from $49 billion a year earlier, according to Apple's earnings release filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Services revenue, which includes the App Store, Apple Music and other subscriptions, hit an all-time high of $31.6 billion, up 10 percent. Mac revenue jumped 24 percent to $10.8 billion, while iPad revenue slipped 10 percent to $6.2 billion. Net income rose 12 percent to $30.7 billion, and diluted earnings per share came in at $2.10, up 14 percent, a figure that included a small boost from tariff refunds.

"Apple delivered September quarter records for net income and EPS," Chief Financial Officer Kevan Parekh said in the earnings release, which did not include detailed forward guidance beyond a standard disclaimer about forward-looking statements.

The results mark a milestone for Ternus, who ran Apple's hardware engineering division before the company's board tapped him in April to succeed Cook, effective Sept. 1. Cook, who led Apple for more than 13 years and oversaw its rise into a nearly $4 trillion company, moved into the newly created role of executive chairman, where he is expected to continue representing Apple to policymakers and governments. Arthur Levinson, who had been Apple's non-executive chairman for 15 years, became lead independent director the same day Ternus's tenure as CEO began, and Ternus himself joined the board.

Ternus inherits a company that has largely kept its financial momentum intact even as analysts and rivals have questioned whether it moved quickly enough on artificial intelligence. Apple has leaned on steady iPhone upgrade cycles and its high-margin services business — now one of its fastest-growing segments — to keep revenue climbing, even as competitors including Google and Samsung built out AI features across their devices faster than Apple's own Apple Intelligence push. Monday's results, with records in both net income and iPhone revenue, offered Ternus an unusually strong opening data point as he takes full ownership of the company's results for the first time.

Apple shares have been closely watched since the leadership transition was announced in the spring, with investors parsing every public appearance by Ternus for signs of how the low-profile engineering chief would handle the investor-relations side of running the company. He had appeared alongside Cook on earlier earnings calls this year as the transition was finalized, but Monday's call was the first on which he spoke as Apple's sole chief executive, with Cook no longer on the line.

The company's stock has traded near record territory in recent months, buoyed by resilient demand for its latest iPhone lineup and investor confidence that the leadership change, in the works for years as part of what Apple described as long-term succession planning, would not disrupt the business. Monday's numbers gave little reason to think otherwise, with records across net income, EPS and iPhone revenue for the quarter.