Apple Stock: Buy, Sell, or Hold?

For years, the knock on Apple (AAPL 1.08%) was that its growth had stalled. The iPhone was mature, the company seemed late to artificial intelligence (AI), and the stock spent much of 2025 lagging the market while investors waited for a reason to get excited again. But that story has changed. Shares recently touched an all-time high, and as of this writing, the stock has climbed about 13% in 2026 and is up more than 50% over the past 12 months. So, with the stock near a record and two potential catalysts on the calendar, is it a buy, a sell, or a hold? Image source: Apple. A business firing on all cylinders Apple's latest results don't look like those of a company that has run out of room to grow. In its fiscal second quarter of 2026 (the period ended March 28, 2026), revenue rose 17% year over year to $111.2 billion -- the company's best March quarter ever. And earnings per share climbed 22% to $2.01. And the strength was broad: Apple grew by double digits in every geographic region it reports. The standout was the iPhone. Revenue from Apple's most important product jumped 22% year over year to about $57 billion, a March-quarter record, driven by demand for the iPhone 17 lineup. "Customer enthusiasm for iPhone has been extraordinary," said Apple CEO Tim Cook during the company's fiscal second-quarter earnings call. Demand ran so far ahead of supply, in fact, that Apple couldn't make enough of them. The constraint, Cook explained, came down to the availability of the advanced nodes on which Apple's iPhone chips are produced. Then there's Greater China -- a major market for Apple. Revenue there grew 28% in the quarter, with iPhone as the top-selling smartphone model in urban China. But the part of Apple's business that may deserve the most attention is services -- the App Store, iCloud, Apple Music, Apple TV, payments, and advertising. Services revenue rose about 16% year over year to a record $31 billion. This segment's strong growth should persist for years. Apple now counts more than 2.5 billion active devices in use, and each one is a potential gateway to that recurring, high-margin revenue. Today's Change(-1.08%) $-3.35Current Price$307.88 So, what about the valuation? But Apple stock isn't cheap. As of this writing, shares trade at a price-to-earnings ratio of about 37 -- a premium to the broader market and well above where the stock traded during its sluggish stretch in 2025. In addition to valuation risk, Apple management said in the company's most recent earnings call that heightened memory costs remain a threat and could weigh on results. And the more prominent risk is probably Apple's positioning in an era of AI. To date, the company hasn't established a strong foothold in AI. Yet that last point may be about to flip from a weakness into a catalyst. Apple's annual developer conference kicks off June 8, where the company is widely expected to unveil a dramatically rebuilt Siri -- reportedly leaning on a custom version of Alphabet's Gemini -- that would finally bring Apple's voice assistant closer to the modern AI chatbots users have grown used to. And looking toward the fall, reports point to a major new iPhone, rumored to carry the Ultra name, that could spark another upgrade wave on top of the one already underway. Fortunately, Apple's business looks deserving of a premium valuation anyway. This is a company growing revenue at a double-digit clip, generating roughly $100 billion in annual free cash flow, and returning enormous sums to shareholders through buybacks and a dividend -- all backed by an extremely loyal customer base. That durability is rare, and it's a big reason the valuation is justifiable. Add in a revamped Siri, potentially days away, and a marquee new iPhone, possibly months away, and Apple looks like one of the few high-priced tech names whose price tag seems reasonable. For long-term investors, shares could still be worth buying here -- even near a record high.