00:00 Speaker A
I am acutely aware of the appeal of research reporting. I’ve done this before. Killer studies all end with a catchy headline, almost like a reporter’s feature. So I have to give credit to our friends at Moffett Nathanson for their coverage of Apple today. Look at the title of this. It immediately fascinated me, and then the points they made certainly supported that. Here’s what they said about Apple that caught my attention. Apple is seen neither as an AI winner nor as an AI loser. Instead, it has been seen as a survivor of artificial intelligence. So Apple has not followed the lead of its larger peers, or rather it has acted, but increasingly in the opposite way, acting as a safe haven when risk appetite, especially related to artificial intelligence, declines, and as a source of funding when risk appetite rises. However, the report is inconclusive. The analysts are keeping their ratings at Neutral, and they’re not big fans of Neutral ratings, just saying that.
00:54 Speaker A
But let’s bring it to the opening roundtable, uh, Peter Berezin, Rick Palma and Inez Ferre. Inez coming to you, uh, because you and I have talked about the past, I’ll say how Apple has performed so far this year and hearing from people who might be buying Apple just because it’s an AI survivor. This isn’t actually an explicit endorsement of the company.
01:22 Inez Ferre
No, I mean, look at Apple, if you look at the one-month chart, Apple was up almost 10% in the last month. Well, at the same time, Microsoft’s stock price fell 16%. Well, Apple is a hardware company here. Just about a week ago, you saw Apple gain 3% in one day. This is a report from Bloomberg, they are developing wearables powered by AI, talking about pendants powered by AI, um AirPods.
02:01 Speaker A
Oh, great. More bullshit, I gotta recharge, Inez. I want to unplug the pendant and hang it on the wall.
02:08 Inez Ferre
Yeah yeah. I mean, the reality is, you need these devices to be able to leverage artificial intelligence to keep communicating in the same way that every one of us is stuck on our phones. I mean, that’s the game here, they’re at this advantage point, they’ve got this market share on the iPhone, as far as AI goes, they can scale to as much hardware as they want. They are hardware plays.
02:32 Speaker A
Brooke, but at some point, I think Apple is going to have to launch a clearer plan for AI. That’s why the stock spent much of last year in a box office. They seem to be getting a pass this year, the market is focused on a strong iPhone cycle, but at some point you want to hear more from Tim Cook on artificial intelligence, but I think you also want to hear now from Tim Cook, who may be his successor.
03:04 Brooke
Absolutely. These are some of the key things or key catalysts that Wall Street is really focused on right now. When they announced their partnership with Google Gemini, they not only felt a little relieved about Apple’s position in the AI arms race, it got Wall Street very excited. Finally, they’re doing something to really push Siri in the right direction. On top of that, keep in mind that we’re getting new AI leadership at Apple after some executive changes over the past few months, which really has Wall Street worried about the departures of all those executives, including CEO Tim Cook, who is seeking to be named as his successor. Many speculate that we may see this in the first half of 2026. We’ll definitely be watching closely.
03:59 Brooke
And, as Inez said, yes, AI is really important here, but it’s still largely focused on it on the hardware side. We’re expected to get a new touchscreen MacBook Pro, and I’ve heard a lot about foldable iPhones. I’m looking forward to this too. So when it comes to Apple’s specific situation right now, investors are definitely looking at bullish downside.
04:22 Speaker A
Brooke, I was disappointed with that foldable iPhone. This takes me back to my razor days, when I spent about $1500 on a new Motorola razor that was, uh, unopened or unboxed. So that’s really cool. Peter, you remember when Apple was, I guess, the market leader, like it was the most important company. I mean, do you still think Apple is a stock or a company disrupting the market?
04:42 Peter Berezin
I mean, it’s hard to know, right? I would say that my own experience is that every new iPhone is slightly better than the one before it, but the pace of innovation we see early in the iPhone cycle is that the third version is much better than the second version, and the fourth version is much better than the third version. You know, it kind of slowed it down a little bit. So, yes, I think Apple faces a risk that the same thing that happened to BlackBerry will eventually happen to Apple. A new company comes out with a better, more attractive product, and Apple becomes a thing of the past. I don’t know if that will happen, but it’s certainly risky.