Apple reported fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of $114.5 billion, up 12% from a year earlier, in the company’s first earnings release under Chief Executive John Ternus. Diluted earnings per share rose 14% to $2.10 for the quarter ended Sept. 26, while gross margin reached 47.9%. The headline figures set September-quarter records for company revenue, iPhone revenue and earnings per share, according to Apple’s Nov. 2 earnings release.
The results also carry an important comparability qualification. Apple said tariff refunds added approximately one percentage point to gross margin and $0.05 to diluted EPS. Those disclosures do not change the reported results, but they identify a material contribution to a quarter that also included an all-time high in Services revenue and completed Apple’s highest-revenue fiscal year, with full-year sales of $479 billion.
The refund effect in the numbers
Apple’s 47.9% gross margin included roughly one percentage point of favorable effect from tariff refunds. A simple subtraction puts the margin at about 46.9% without that identified benefit, though Apple did not publish an adjusted gross-margin figure or characterize the refund impact as recurring. The company likewise disclosed the $0.05 EPS contribution without breaking out its tax or accounting components beyond the stated per-share effect.
That makes the refund disclosure more useful as a guide to interpretation than as a stand-alone measure of operating performance. The benefit equaled about 2.4% of Apple’s reported $2.10 in diluted EPS. It should not be treated as a complete alternative earnings calculation, because the company has not supplied one.
External expectations provide another reference point. An Associated Press report carried by ABC News, citing FactSet, said analysts on average expected revenue of $113.4 billion and earnings of $1.99 a share. Apple therefore exceeded the cited revenue consensus by $1.1 billion and EPS consensus by $0.11. The disclosed $0.05 refund benefit is equivalent to about 45% of that numerical EPS gap, but that arithmetic does not establish how much of the earnings surprise the refunds caused; the consensus and the company’s financial results include many other variables.
Apple declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.27 a share, payable Nov. 16 to shareholders of record as of Nov. 12. The payout maintains the company’s capital-return program alongside a fiscal year in which its aggregate revenue reached a company record.
A first earnings release, not a full Ternus quarter
The results are the first issued with Ternus as Apple’s chief executive, but the timing is narrower than the label may suggest. A company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission says Ternus became CEO effective Sept. 1, 25 days before the fiscal quarter closed. Tim Cook became executive chair at the same time.
That sequence means the September results provide the market’s first formal financial benchmark during Ternus’s tenure, rather than a performance report for a quarter managed entirely under his leadership. Apple’s fiscal fourth quarter began before his appointment, and the company’s release did not attribute the revenue growth, product records or Services result to the CEO transition.
The filing also places the change within a succession plan disclosed earlier in the year. For investors assessing the new management structure, the more informative measurements may emerge in subsequent quarters, when product, cost and capital-allocation decisions are more fully associated with the new chief executive’s operating period.
December margins are the next comparison point
Apple’s release did not include a December-quarter forecast in the available text. A syndicated Associated Press account reported that Apple expected December-quarter gross margin of 45% to 46%, citing higher memory costs and expenses related to the company’s Siri artificial-intelligence release.
Because that range is reported by the wire service rather than stated in the available company release, it should be read as attributed guidance. Even so, it frames the immediate comparison: the reported September-quarter margin was 47.9%, including the disclosed refund-related lift. Removing that one-point effect mechanically produces an approximate 46.9% reference point, still above the reported 45%-to-46% December range.
The difference does not by itself identify the source of any margin change, and Apple has not said whether tariff refunds will appear in future periods. But the two disclosures establish a clearer baseline for reading the record quarter: reported September profitability contained a specifically identified refund benefit, while the next-quarter margin range reported by the AP points lower amid cost pressures.