Apple’s New CEO Just Sold $8.5 Million of Stock
Apple's new CEO just unloaded a significant block of shares days after taking the top job, but the real story is buried in the Form 4 filing and what it reveals about executive pay, trading plans, and whether the stock…
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Chief executive John Ternus sold 25,412 shares of Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) on October 2, 2026, for about $8.46 million, at prices between $331.38 and $334.05. The Form 4 filed October 5 shows his first reported open-market sale since the former head of hardware engineering replaced Tim Cook, now Executive Chair, on September 1, 2026.
The sale followed a routine annual vest under a pre-set trading plan and left Ternus with more Apple stock than before. Shares closed at $333.63 on October 6, up 0.22%.
Vest, Withhold, Sell: How the Sequence Worked
A restricted stock unit (RSU) vests into actual stock on a set date. On October 1, 99,878 units from a 2023 performance award vested on a schedule fixed years earlier.
Vesting counts as taxable income whether or not anything is sold. Apple withheld 49,054 shares, which the filing describes as “Shares withheld by Apple to satisfy tax withholding requirements on vesting of RSUs.”
Withholding is a tax payment made in shares, so those shares are excluded from the $8.46 million figure. Adding them in would overstate the size of the sale. Ternus then sold 25,412 shares, half of what remained.
The filing says the trades ran under a plan Ternus adopted on May 21, 2026, under SEC Rule 10b5-1. That rule lets insiders fix future trades ahead of time, so the sale follows the plan and the executive does not decide it based on what he knows that day. Because insiders who adopt these plans may know material information at the time, the adoption date matters more than the execution date, and Cook adopted this plan months before the sale.
Cook and O’Brien Sold More on the Same Day
Under a plan he adopted May 28, 2026, Cook sold 191,753 shares for about $63.8 million after 374,541 units vested, and he still holds 3,237,843 shares. Senior vice president Deirdre O’Brien sold 46,389 shares for about $15.5 million.
Multiple executives selling after one company-wide vest shows a shared pay calendar. The awards paid above target because Apple’s three-year total shareholder return was 90.67%, ranking in the 76th percentile of the S&P 500 Index.
On any Form 4, start with the transaction code: S is an open-market sale, F is tax withholding, M is a unit conversion. Look for a Rule 10b5-1 plan footnote and adoption date, then check shares owned after the transaction.
Should You Buy or Sell AAPL Stock
The sale says little about the business, because fiscal third-quarter revenue rose 16.4% to $109.42 billion, and EPS of $2.02 beat the $1.89 estimate.
Apple trades at 43 times trailing earnings. About $0.11 of that quarter’s EPS came from tariff refunds that will not repeat.
Still, net income grew 27.1% and Services brought in $30.74 billion. Growth like that is rare for a company worth about $4.87 trillion, and it strengthens the long-term case.
The test is the next earnings report, expected in late October. If revenue keeps growing by double digits without help from tariff refunds, the case holds. Closing above the $345.34 52-week high would confirm it.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Omor Ibne Ehsan is a writer at 24/7 Wall St. He is a self-taught investor with a focus on growth, cyclical, and dividend equities that have strong fundamentals, value, and long-term potential. He also has an interest in high-risk, high-reward investments such as penny stocks.
