Apple Inc.

Apple just posted 16.4% revenue growth and 28.7% earnings growth year over year, with $111.5 billion in operating cash flow through the door in a single year. This is not a company coasting. It's compounding.

Why now? At $305.59, Apple sits about 11% below its 52-week high of $344.57 and 37% above its low of $223.78. A real pullback in a business that keeps growing earnings. I'd rather buy a great company 11% off its high than a mediocre one at a discount.

Growth catalysts I'm watching: - iPhone and Mac still growing double digits, feeding the installed base. - Services: the highest-margin segment, compounding subscription revenue every quarter. - Six software platforms lock customers in across every device. - A $90.7 billion buyback keeps shrinking the share count and lifting per-share earnings.

Apple's story starts in 1984, when the Macintosh redefined what a personal computer could be. And it's been compounding since. Today the lineup spans iPhone, iPad, Mac, AirPods, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro. More than 150,000 employees run a business worth roughly $4.46 trillion by market cap.

The tailwind is simple. The world keeps spending on premium technology, and Apple keeps converting that spend into recurring services revenue. Double-digit growth in its biggest product lines, in every geographic segment, is hard to fake. I care less about the next gadget than about the subscription base already paying month after month. That base is the moat.

Apple's customers are basically everyone. Consumers buy iPhones and AirPods. Professionals and developers run their work on Macs and iPads. What matters is loyalty. Apple doesn't really have customers so much as an installed base that upgrades and subscribes, year after year. Churn is the enemy, and Apple barely has any.

Samsung and Google push Android hardware and software hard. Microsoft owns the enterprise PC and the cloud. Amazon and Meta fight for attention and subscription dollars. Apple's edge is that it owns the whole product, the hardware and the software, end to end. That's why it can charge premium prices and hold 48.7% gross margins while Android makers scrap over thin ones.

I've made the mistake of overpaying for growth before and watched the multiple do the damage. Apple at 35 times trailing earnings isn't cheap. But this is the rare business where the multiple is the price of admission to a compounding machine, not a bet on a story that hasn't happened yet.

Can I depend on Apple for three to five years? I can. It prints $111.5 billion in operating cash flow and buys back $90.7 billion of its own stock each year, with debt that's trivial next to that cash generation. The details are in the financials, and they're the reason I sleep well holding this.

Apple put it plainly in its July 2026 third-quarter results: "Today, Apple is proud to report our strongest June quarter ever, with double-digit revenue growth across iPhone, Mac and Services, and in every geographic segment."

*This information is for general knowledge and informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. All data sourced from the figures above.*