- Apple’s stock is on a downward slide this year and investors are looking for signs of a turnaround during its upcoming July earnings call. Some market watchers have called out the company’s AI efforts as half-baked, and one research firm called for Tim Cook to step aside, despite a historically strong track record.
As Apple’s stock trades down double digits since the start of the year, market onlookers are hoping its next earnings call will show strength and dispel doubts about Tim Cook’s leadership.
The iPhone maker has faced pressure across the board since the start of the year, especially as President Donald Trump’s tariffs threaten its Asia supply chain. At the same time, some have claimed the company has fallen behind in the accelerating AI race, and may need to execute an uncharacteristically massive acquisition to catch up.
Amid all those obstacles, Apple’s stock is down about 16% year-to-date. And research firm LightShed Partners suggested in a recent note to clients that the company’s woes, in AI especially, mean Apple needs a shakeup at the top.
“Apple now needs a product-focused CEO, not one centered on logistics. Apple has ‘pulled the string’ on too many product categories, only to see them fall short of meaningful scale, or fail to materialize entirely,” wrote LightShed analysts Walter Piecyk and Joe Galone. “But AI is not something that Apple can merely ‘pull the string’ on. Missing on AI could fundamentally alter the company’s long-term trajectory and ability to grow at all.”
The analysts’ comments come in the wake of Apple’s annual WWDC, which Wedbush analyst Dan Ives called “a snoozer” which barely mentioned AI. The LightShed analysts noted that it would be kind to say Apple overpromised and underdelivered on its AI promises from last year to this year.
“Apple was nowhere with AI then, and little has changed since,” the note read.
Ives of Wedbush has called for Apple to acquire the AI web search startup Perplexity in order to gain a foothold in the AI race. Still, Apple, in the tradition of cofounder Steve Jobs, has mostly preferred to build products in-house rather than acquire.
Apple did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
Despite the company’s issues, calls for Tim Cook to step aside may be premature, others have claimed, given his past success in elevating the company’s stock price by nearly 1500% over his decade-plus tenure. Thanks in part to his background in logistics, the Apple CEO also revamped the company’s supply chains to achieve higher margins and grew its net income to about $100 billion at its peak, from $25.9 billion at the start of his tenure.
Other market onlookers, including Melissa Otto, the head of research at S&P Global Visible Alpha, say the company’s upcoming earnings on July 31, are Apple’s chance to demonstrate a turnaround.
If Apple is no longer going to deliver the same kind of growth investors have been used to in its core devices business, it will need to show the potential of another category.
This lifeline could come in the form of Apple’s growing services business, which includes iCloud, App Store purchase fees, and advertising. During its second quarter, Apple’s year-over-year services growth grew by double digits to about $26.6 billion, which—while still short of the $68.7 billion brought in by its products—made up a growing chunk of its revenue. Services revenue came in at $96.1 billion as of the company’s last annual report, up from $85.2 billion in fiscal 2023, and analysts project it will continue to grow by year’s end.
The question now, said Otto, is whether Apple can take advantage of the high-margin services business to really drive revenue growth.
“I think if they can continue to outpace expectations around the services business, we may start to see additional incremental positive sentiment come into the stock; however, if they don’t, that does leave a lot of open questions about what’s next for them,” Otto told Fortune.
