I keep hitting the buy button on Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction), and the July 30 earnings report is not slowing me down. Every payday, I add a few more shares. The reasons are boring, repeatable, and they stack in my favor over years, which is the profile I want in a core holding heading into retirement. Here is what keeps pulling me back.
A cash machine that pays me to wait
Apple generated $111.48 billion in operating cash flow in FY25 and returned $90.71 billion to shareholders through buybacks that same year. In April, the board authorized another $100 billion repurchase program and raised the quarterly dividend 4% to $0.27. Total capital returned since the program began now exceeds $1 trillion. The 0.34% yield looks small in isolation, but paired with ROE of 171.4% and ROIC of 53.3%, I am fine with management compounding capital inside the business instead of mailing it out.
The Services engine keeps widening the moat
Q2 FY26 revenue reached $111.18 billion, up 16.6% year over year, with iPhone at $56.99 billion and Services at an all-time record $30.98 billion. Services gross margin ran at 76.7% on a base of over 2.5 billion active devices. That is a high-margin annuity riding on hardware customers already own. Tim Cook described Apple Intelligence as “woven into the core of our platforms”, and MacBook Neo demand is running so hot he flagged the company was “supply constrained”. Greater China grew 28% in the March quarter. Management guided June-quarter revenue growth of 14% to 17% with gross margin of 47.5% to 48.5%. That is what the July 30 report will confirm.
An earnings track record I trust
Apple has delivered nine consecutive beats, with the last quarter posting an EPS of $2.01 against a $1.94 estimate. In the 30 days after that May report, shares rose 10.75%, outpacing SPY by 6.09 percentage points. Over the past year the stock is up 45.86%, and over ten years it is up 1,313.91% on a split-adjusted basis. That is the kind of compounding I plan around.
The risk I actually respect
China exposure and the supply chain keep me disciplined. Greater China revenue was $20.50 billion last quarter, and Cook warned that “significantly higher memory costs” will pressure the June quarter. Add the CEO handoff to John Ternus effective September 1, 2026 and the execution bar is real. My response: those memory costs are already baked into the 47.5% to 48.5% margin guide, and Ternus is a 25-year Apple veteran inheriting a roadmap Cook publicly called “incredible”.
Why the buy button stays active
At a P/E of 40 on a business printing 26.9% net margins at a $4.53 trillion market cap, Apple looks pricey on the screen and reasonable on the cash it will send my account over the next decade. I plan to keep buying through July 30, and the quarter after that, and the one after that.
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