Apple Q1 2026 earnings: record $143.8B quarter on iPhone, Services strength
Apple posted record December-quarter revenue and profit, led by its best-ever iPhone sales and all-time-high Services revenue.
| Q1 2026 | Reported |
|---|---|
| EPS | $2.84 |
| Revenue | $143.76B |
Figures as reported by the company to the SEC for the quarter ended December 27, 2025. Analyst estimates are not part of a filing, so no comparison to expectations is shown.
Key takeaways
- Revenue for the quarter ended December 27, 2025 rose 16% from a year earlier to $143.8 billion, which Apple called a record for the December quarter; earnings per share of $2.84 were up 19% year over year, also a company record.
- iPhone was the biggest driver, posting its best-ever quarter with sales of about $85.3 billion, up 23% from a year ago, with CEO Tim Cook citing “unprecedented demand” and all-time sales records in every geographic region Apple tracks.
- Services — the App Store, subscriptions like Apple Music and iCloud, AppleCare and similar offerings — also hit an all-time revenue record of $30.0 billion, up 14% year over year, showing continued growth from Apple’s large base of existing device owners rather than new hardware sales alone.
- Cook said Apple’s installed base of active devices topped 2.5 billion for the first time, a scale that underpins the Services business and gives Apple a large, recurring customer base to sell into.
- The quarter generated close to $54 billion in operating cash flow, and Apple returned almost $32 billion to shareholders through buybacks and dividends, according to CFO Kevan Parekh — a sign the business is generating substantially more cash than it needs to fund operations.
- Trailing-twelve-month profitability improved alongside the growth: gross margin stood at about 48.7% and net profit margin at about 27.6%, both reflecting strong cost control even as Apple scaled up production to meet iPhone demand.
- Return on equity over the trailing twelve months was notably high, at over 137%, largely because Apple has returned so much cash to shareholders over the years that its equity base is small relative to its profit — a long-standing feature of Apple’s balance sheet rather than a new development.
- For the March 2026 quarter, Apple guided revenue growth of 13% to 16% year over year, noting the outlook factors in iPhone supply constraints, and said gross margin should land between 48.0% and 49.0%.
- Management said Services revenue growth in the current quarter is expected to run at a similar pace to the December quarter’s 14% rate, suggesting no major slowdown anticipated in that business.
Q1 2026 in context
| Metric | Dec 2025 | Dec 2024 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $143.8B | $124.3B | +15.7% |
| Net income | $42.1B | $36.3B | +15.9% |
| Free cash flow | $51.6B | $27.0B | +91.0% |
| Diluted EPS | $2.84 | $2.40 | +18.3% |
| Gross margin | 48.2% | 46.9% | +1.3 pts |
| Operating margin | 35.4% | 34.5% | +0.9 pts |
| Net margin | 29.3% | 29.2% | +0.1 pts |
Figures for the quarter ended Dec 2025 and the quarter ended Dec 2024, as reported to the SEC.
Each company's quarter ending in calendar Q4 '25, as reported to the SEC. A peer that reported no revenue figure for that quarter is left out.
How the stock took it
Apple Inc. closed at $258.28 on Jan 29, 2026, the last session before the report, and at $270.01 on Feb 2, 2026, the first session after it — +4.5% across the report.
Closes from the market's daily record. Each figure spans the report date — from the last session that closed before it to the first that closed after — because a company may report before the open or after the close.
Sources: company report · earnings call