Good morning. The new year means a new finance chief for Apple Inc.
Kevan Parekh transitioned from VP of financial planning and analysis into the role of SVP and CFO on Jan. 1. The tech giant, which previously announced that its longtime CFO Luca Maestri would take on a new role, released a Form 8-K on Friday, making the transition official.
Parekh joined the company in 2013. His other former positions at Apple include VP of finance for sales, marketing, and retail. Before joining Apple, he held various senior leadership roles at Thomson Reuters and General Motors. As CFO of Apple, Parekh’s annual salary was increased to $1 million.
Meanwhile, Maestri is now the VP of corporate services, which includes information systems and technology, information security, and real estate and development. He reports to Apple CEO Tim Cook, according to the company. Maestri was previously the CFO at Apple for more than 10 years.
I asked analysts what they expect from the new finance chief.
“These are big shoes to fill in Cupertino, but we see the same CFO playbook,” Dan Ives, managing director and senior equity analyst at Wedbush Securities told me. Parekh is an Apple veteran, and he understands the culture and process that Maestri built, Ives said. “We see no speed bumps ahead in this transition,” he said.
William Kerwin, an equity analyst for Morningstar, had a similar sentiment. “We think Parekh will continue Maestri’s playbook and this should be good news for Apple shareholders,” Kerwin said.
Maestri oversaw a period of tremendous margin expansion for Apple, along with rising leverage towards the firm’s goal of being net cash neutral longer-term, he said. Morningstar expects both of these trends to continue under Parekh and predicts continuity in Apple’s strategy in the transition.
Strategy is certainly vital to Apple, No. 3 on the Fortune 500 list. It’s on track to become the first company with a market cap exceeding $4 trillion, Fortune reported. Apple’s stock growth has been fueled by optimism around AI advancements in iPhones and other devices. Morningstar expects the AI strategy to have a greater impact on device sales in late 2025 into 2026, given it’s been a protracted rollout and “the most appealing features of Apple Intelligence, in our view, have yet to be released,” Kerwin said.
Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
Leaderboard
Peter Clifford is resigning from his positions as SVP, COO and CFO at The AZEK Company Inc. (NYSE: AZEK), a manufacturer of sustainable outdoor living products. Clifford is pursuing another opportunity with a private company. Ryan Lada, VP and CFO of the residential segment at AZEK, will be promoted to the role of SVP, CFO and treasurer, effective Jan. 24. Lada joined the company as VP of corporate finance in July 2022.
Katie Rooney was appointed CFO at Maven Clinic, a global virtual clinic for women's and family health. Before joining Maven, Rooney served as the global CFO and chief operating officer at Alight, a cloud-based benefits provider. During her seven-year tenure, she led Alight’s divestiture, stood up its standalone infrastructure and global financial system, and its $4.8 billion sale. She subsequently managed financing for nine acquisitions and took the company public through a SPAC. Rooney also previously served as the CFO of Aon Hewitt.
Big Deal
E*TRADE from Morgan Stanley’s monthly analysis finds the three most bought sectors on the platform in December were consumer discretionary (+13.92%), real estate (+7.49%), and utilities (+7.44%). The data is based on the net percentage buy/sell behavior of stocks on the platform that comprise the S&P 500 sectors.
“While there may have been a defensive element to some of the buying in utilities and real estate, the push into the consumer discretionary sector suggested more of a ‘risk-on’ mindset, led by purchases of TSLA and AMZN,” Chris Larkin, managing director of trading and investing at E*TRADE, said in a statement. Meanwhile, traders remained bearish on health care into the end of the year and clients were also net sellers of industrials, Larkin said.
Going deeper
The funded status of the nation’s largest corporate defined benefit (DB) pension plans improved only modestly in 2024, despite strong U.S. equity market gains and rising long-term interest rates, according to a new analysis by Willis Towers Watson (WTW), a global advisory, broking, and solutions company.
WTW examined pension plan data for 361 Fortune 1000 companies that sponsor U.S. DB pension plans and have a December fiscal year-end date.
The aggregate pension-funded status of these plans at the end of 2024 is estimated to be 100%, just two percentage points higher than 98% at the end of 2023, according to WTW. Pension obligations declined from $1.25 trillion at the end of 2023 to an estimated $1.12 trillion at the end of 2024 due to higher interest rates and pension risk transfer activity, the analysis found.
Overheard
“The age of AI Agentics is here.”
—Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said during his CES 2025 keynote on Monday, Fortune reported. Huang described a shift from generative AI to agentic AI—a future driven by intelligent AI agents capable of assisting with tasks across industries. He called this emerging sector “a multitrillion-dollar opportunity,” positioning Nvidia at the forefront of the movement.