apple Fiscal first-quarter earnings are scheduled to be released after the bell on Thursday.

Based on LSE consensus estimates, Wall Street expected the following:

• earnings per share: $2.67
• income: US$138.48 billion

Apple’s first fiscal quarter ended in December, and the company has previously said it expects many people to buy iPhones during the holidays.

The company said it expects total revenue to grow 10% to 12% this quarter, with iPhone sales to achieve similar double-digit growth rates. This means Apple expects iPhone 17 sales to be between $136.73 billion and $139.22 billion in the first full quarter.

This has led analysts to be optimistic that the company will report results on Thursday. Regardless, investors have sold off the stock, which is down nearly 11% since its Dec. 2 peak.

Analysts are likely to press Apple management on operating costs and how much the company pays for components like memory and storage, whose prices have soared due to the AI ​​drive. shortage.

All of Apple’s computers, including iPhones, Macs and iPads, use large amounts of storage and memory, raising questions about how the company plans to cope with rising component costs during what it calls a major growth cycle. Finance chief Kevan Parekh said in October that while the company was seeing a slight increase in memory prices, he downplayed that, saying there was “nothing really noteworthy.”

“We believe Street has not fully factored in the margin impact of rising memory costs into its fiscal 2026 forecast,” Morgan Stanley analyst Erik Woodring wrote in a note on Monday. He gave the stock the equivalent of a buy rating and a $315 price target.

Woodring added that he doesn’t expect the surge in memory prices to impact Apple this quarter, but that could change over time.

“We believe consensus has not yet adjusted to a better-than-expected iPhone 17 cycle, but at the same time, they have not adjusted to higher opex and/or gross margin headwinds,” Woodring wrote.

Apple CEO Tim Cook You may also be asked about the company’s AI strategy. Earlier this month, the company Announce it chooses Google’s Gemini will run part of Apple Intelligence software, replacing some artificial intelligence models built in-house.

Cook may also mention The highly anticipated Siri release This year is “even more personal” and takes advantage of advances in artificial intelligence.

But even Apple’s AI story may run into memory price issues, with Jefferies analysts noting this week that “commercialization and monetization of AI remain challenging.”

“Not only are consumers unclear about the use cases for AI, rapidly rising memory prices are likely to make it harder to financially justify any edge AI applications over the next two years,” Jefferies analyst Edison Lee, who has a hold rating on the stock, wrote on Monday.

watch: Apple tells us all about its new iPhone chips and on-device AI plans