Apple June 2026 print
Apple reported its earnings, and at first glance at the data, it seemed to me that the company had significantly underestimated its own forecasts for the current quarter. And following its lead, I, too, lowered my projections.
Judge for yourself:
| Line | Bear | Base | Bull | Actual |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Net sales, $M | 104 380 | 108 612 | 110 492 | 109 417 |
| Op Income, $M | 30 815 | 33 171 | 34 177 | 35 695 |
| Net Income, $M | 25 784 | 27 739 | 28 575 | 29 789 |
| EPS, $ | 1.76 | 1.9 | 1.95 | 2.02 |
All metrics, except for revenue, came in above the bull case. While in the past I might have considered this “brilliant,” I’m now questioning the accuracy of my calculations.
My doubts intensified when I saw that the gross margin turned out to be 50% (instead of the expected 49%). It might seem like 1% isn’t that much. But! When I broke down the gross margin by category, it turned out that the gross margin for products was 40%. Whereas I had projected 37%. And that’s not just 1%—it’s 3%!
And that’s when things really took off...
I had to read the report more carefully to understand why this figure had suddenly risen. It turned out that this was due to “tariff refunds”:
Products gross margin and gross margin percentage increased … primarily due to a different mix of products and tariff refunds…
Products gross margin was 40.1%, up 140 basis points sequentially. This also included the benefit from the tariff refunds I just mentioned, which had a favorable impact of over 2.5 percentage points.
The math doesn’t lie
According to the report and the conference call, the refund amount is 2.5% × $78 billion = $1.97 billion
With this data, we can recalculate the metrics:
| Line | Actual | - refund | Ex-refund |
|---|---|---|---|
| Net sales | 109,417 | 0 | 109,417 |
| Op Income | 35,695 | −1,967 | 33,728 |
| Net Income | 29,789 | −1,652 | 28,137 |
| EPS | $2.02 | −$0.11 | $1.91 |
Here, we need to take into account that when recalculating net income, we “tax” that very $1.9 billion; no tax is applied to pre-tax income. So what we have here is that three metrics have dropped from “above the bull scenario” to “between the base and bull scenarios.”
In other words, it wasn’t me who underreported the results; the company’s metrics were “affected by external factors.” That very refund of tariff duties masked a slight deterioration in margins. And this is a real risk that isn’t visible to the naked eye.
So now I’m not all that surprised by the negative reaction of the stock, which fell nearly 9% after the report.
I haven’t had a chance to dig into what was discussed at the press conference yet, so I don’t have any new calculations for now.