Apple CEO John Ternus Faces First Earnings Call Amid Memory Cost Surge

John Ternus will host his first earnings call as Apple's CEO on Monday, November 2, 2026, with investors looking to the company's forecast to determine whether a blitz of new products can help offset rising costs for memory chips. Ternus took the reins from Tim Cook in September and has overseen the introduction of Apple's first foldable phone, smart home hub and first touch-screen laptops.

All of those products began shipping during the company's current fiscal first quarter, amid what Cook had called a "100-year flood" of rising memory costs. Apple will face scrutiny over three key issues: its crucial holiday-quarter outlook, Ternus' remarks on AI and the revamped Siri, and rising memory-chip costs that analysts expect to drag quarterly profit growth to its weakest in six quarters.

“Recent agentic innovation far outpaces our experience with Siri AI, but Apple has acknowledged that Siri AI is far more focused on trust/privacy.”

Apple has been trying to position its AI offerings differently than rivals such as Meta's Muse agent, which took App Store rankings by storm in recent weeks. Rivals such as OpenAI, which Apple is suing over alleged trade-secret theft, are also developing devices aimed at displacing the iPhone as the central device in people's lives.

How Apple embraces AI could also have large implications for the future of its services business, whose slowing growth has worried investors after years of rapid expansion. Apple is marketing its AI systems toward "everyday people" rather than Silicon Valley insiders, who are big users of frontier AI models from the likes of OpenAI.

Dan Morgan, portfolio manager at Synovus Trust, which owns Apple shares, said recent agentic innovation far outpaces Apple's experience with Siri AI, but Apple has acknowledged that Siri AI is far more focused on trust and privacy. Morgan added that investors want to know whether Apple could profit by distributing third-party AI agents through its App Store and taking a cut of the business they generate.

For now, Apple's reluctance to join the massive AI spending race has worked in its favor. Its shares have risen about 27 percent this year, outperforming tech giants such as Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta and Amazon as investors seek shelter from mounting concerns over the cost of building AI infrastructure.