Good morning, investors. I’ll be at the ETF Investor Forum in New York City today hanging out with some of the best capital allocators, market strategists and independent investors in the world. If you’re here, come say hi!
Now let’s talk Apple.
Apple is the only Magnificent 7 stock beating the market this year.
And it got there while spending a sliver of what its peers are pouring into AI.
Apple reported record September-quarter revenue of more than $114 billion on Monday, beating the $113.4 billion analysts expected.
Earnings came in at $2.10 a share, above the $1.99 estimate, in the first quarterly report since John Ternus took over as CEO on September 1.
iPhone sales grew more than 17% to a September-quarter record
Greater China sales jumped 21%
Services revenue hit an all-time high of more than $31 billion
So far this year, Apple stock has climbed more than 24%.
That's more than double the S&P 500's gain.
Nvidia is a distant second, and three of the Magnificent 7 are negative on the year.
Capital expenditures are a key reason for the divergence. Apple spent about $9 billion on capital expenditures over its last four quarters, while Amazon spent more than $215 billion in the same period.
Then you have Alphabet, which spent more than $159 billion, Microsoft more than $135 billion and Meta more than $104 billion.
That works out to less than 2% of sales for Apple, compared with 43% at Meta and 39% at Microsoft.
Indeed, Meta's capex has grown faster than its revenue for 10 straight quarters.
Apple went the other way, with capex falling more than 30% in the September quarter from a year earlier.
Amazon's more than doubled over the same comparison.
Nvidia spends less than Apple in dollars, but it designs chips and leaves the factories to others.
The four biggest spenders have guided to more than $700 billion in capex for 2026.
None of this means Apple can sit out the AI buildout forever, but so far its shareholders have had little reason to complain.
Elsewhere
🤖 Marvell agreed to buy Lumentum in a $115 billion all-stock deal. Lumentum shareholders will get 4.5 Marvell shares for each share they own, and both stocks fell on the news. (CNBC)
📊 Anthropic disclosed about $17 billion in third-quarter revenue in its amended IPO filing. Growth slowed to about 47% from the prior quarter, and the AI company listed more than $895 billion in compute and infrastructure commitments. (CNBC)
📈 SpaceX is reportedly in talks to buy Boost Mobile or use its network. The talks could end with SpaceX buying Boost outright or getting access to the network it leases from AT&T and T-Mobile, according to The Washington Post. (Yahoo Finance)
Rapid-fire
Oil fell more than 7% as Iran signaled openness to peace talks (Reuters)
UBS upgraded Rivian to buy and called its selloff a buying opportunity ahead of the R2 ramp (Investing.com)
Estée Lauder raised its full-year outlook as organic fragrance sales rose 20% (Yahoo Finance)
Oracle stock fell more than 8% after a $20 billion stock and bond filing (Opening Bell Daily)
Deutsche Bank upgraded CrowdStrike to buy and said AI will unleash a tsunami of cyber demand (Investing.com)
The S&P 500 rose in the year after all 19 midterm elections since 1950 (Opening Bell Daily)
On this day
🗓 November 3, 1997: Sanyo Securities filed for bankruptcy protection, the first Japanese brokerage to do so since World War II. Its default in the interbank lending market helped set off a wave of Japanese financial failures that month.
Last thing
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