Apple’s Sept. 9 Event Could Change Everything

Apple’s Sept. 9 Event Could Change Everything

Alex Sirois

Mon, September 7, 2026 at 3:55 PM GMT+3 4 min read

Quick Read

• Apple (AAPL) beat EPS estimates nine straight quarters, returned $62B to shareholders, and runs a Services segment at a 76% gross margin.

• Despite owning Microsoft (MSFT) and Alphabet (GOOGL), the author directs fresh capital to Apple for its unmatched hardware install base and aggressive buyback program.

• Tim Cook called memory pricing a "100-year flood," yet Apple guided roughly 10% revenue growth and gross margins near 48% for the September quarter.

• Just released. Our analysts combed the entire stock market and named the ten best stocks to buy right now, and Apple didn't make the cut. Enter your email to see the names that beat AAPL. The report is free. Enter your email and see if any of your stocks made the cut.

I keep clicking buy on Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), and my brokerage statement shows it. The Sept. 9 event is simply the next chapter of a story I already own, and my dollar-cost average is going along for the ride.

Here is what pulls me back to the ticker every month. Apple sits on an install base that surpassed 2.5 billion active devices as of Q1 FY2026. Every one of those users is a live monetization channel, and the Services segment keeps pulling the lever. Services revenue hit $30.74B in Q3 FY2026 at a 75.6% gross margin. A quarter of the company runs on software economics, and that is the piece the market keeps underrating.

The financials back the conviction. Revenue in Q3 FY2026 rose 16.36% YoY to $109.42B, and iPhone alone grew 22% year over year on the iPhone 17 lineup. EPS came in at $2.02 versus $1.89 estimate, the ninth straight beat. Return on invested capital sits at 53.35%, with an operating margin of 31.97%. Companies that compound at those spreads for years tend to make patient shareholders wealthy.

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Capital return is the third leg. Apple ran through $62.09B in buybacks over the nine months through June 27, 2026, raised the dividend 4% in Q2 FY2026, and authorized another $100B in repurchases. The $0.27 quarterly dividend only yields 0.33%, but total shareholder yield tells a different story. My share count shrinks without me lifting a finger.

Passing on the Obvious Alternatives

The default push from every mega-cap tech investor I know is toward Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) or Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL). I own some of both. I still choose Apple for fresh capital because the combination I want lives here: a hardware install base customers replace on a cadence they set themselves, paired with a cash-return machine that moved $62.09B back to shareholders in three quarters against a $4.67 trillion market cap. Nine straight EPS beats and a Q3 net income of $29.79B earn the top of my watchlist.

One Risk I Refuse to Wave Away

Memory pricing is real. CFO Kevan Parekh said that more than 100% of the sequential gross-margin decline into the September quarter, excluding tariff refunds, traces to memory cost, and Tim Cook called it a "100-year flood on the memory pricing". Layer on Greater China exposure and tariff dependency. What keeps me buying anyway: Apple raised prices on iPad and Mac, guided September-quarter revenue growth of 9% to 11%, and still projects gross margin of 47% to 48%. Pricing power answers input inflation.

What Sept. 9 Actually Signals

The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max with 2nm A20 Pro chips, plus the hardware debut of the iPhone Fold, will grab the headlines at Tuesday's event. Prediction markets currently price a foldable announcement at 0.981 probability. What matters to me is the same thing that mattered before the invitation went out: a company earning $29.79B in quarterly net income, sitting on $147 billion in cash and marketable securities, feeding a Services engine that compounded to a $30.98B all-time record in the prior quarter. Sept. 9 is a receipt on a thesis I already own, and every product cycle since I started buying has widened the moat.

I will keep clicking buy.

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