Apple Stock Fell 2.5% on Cook’s Exit News — Analysts Say That’s the Buying Opportunity

By the closing bell on Monday, Apple’s stock had fallen about 2.5 percent following Tim Cook’s official resignation. At $266.17, it closed. It then gradually increased by almost 0.5 percent in after-hours trading. That modest comeback revealed the true temperature of the market during this shift; it was neither panic nor euphoria, but rather a kind of cautious real-time recalibration as investors figured out what a CEO with a hardware focus meant for a company that has spent fifteen years evolving into something much more than a hardware company.

Before hurrying to the Ternus question, it is worthwhile to consider the legacy Cook leaves behind. Today, a $1,000 investment in AAPL, which was trading at about $13.44 on a split-adjusted basis on the day Cook officially became CEO in August 2011, is worth over $20,000. Over the same time period, the S&P 500 returned roughly 504%. Apple made a 1,932 percent return. These figures are not coincidental; they represent what Cook actually created: an ecosystem of 2.5 billion active devices that generates the kind of customer lock-in that consumer product companies spend decades trying to engineer, a services business that generates over $109 billion annually, a wearables category that didn’t exist when he started, and a supply chain that survived a pandemic. Instead of a project, Cook gave Ternus a machine.

However, the stock has been under pressure for about two years. In 2025, Apple’s gain was roughly 11%, less than the S&P 500’s 16%. After Nvidia and Alphabet, it has fallen to third place on the list of the most valuable companies by market capitalization. Only Microsoft and Meta outperformed the other Magnificent Seven in terms of percentage growth during the Cook era. Apple was slow to adopt AI, postponed significant Siri updates, and was put in the awkward position of implementing Google’s Gemini model inside its own operating system rather than fielding something proprietary, according to persistent and pointed criticism. That’s a significant compromise for a business that insisted on owning its core technology for decades.

Ternus’s bull case for the AAPL is based on a few particular wagers. The first is that the question of what comes next physically will be approached differently by a CEO who is passionate about hardware and personally oversaw the iPhone 17 product line and the Apple Silicon transition. There are rumors that an iPhone Ultra with a foldable 7.8-inch internal display is being developed. Demand for the $599 MacBook Neo, which was introduced earlier this year, is reportedly surpassing supply, which is exactly the kind of issue a business wants. At WWDC with iOS 27, a redesigned Siri with true AI chatbot capabilities is anticipated. According to The Motley Fool’s analysis, if investors start to think that a new wave of hardware innovation has truly arrived, a P/E of 40 is not out of the question.

In one version of events, that takes place. Ternus worked at Apple for 25 years, interacting with nearly every product the company produces. He is familiar with the manufacturing partners, the supply chain, and the design culture. He was employed by Cook as well as Jobs. He’s not a stranger coming in from the outside. There is also a version in which Cook’s diplomatic connections with policymakers, such as his carefully cultivated access to the Trump administration, which reportedly started with a single phone call, are lost, creating genuine uncertainty at the precise moment Apple needs to execute on AI. This friction eventually manifests itself in the business.

At $266, the stock is pricing in a middle ground. It’s not a rejection of AAPL’s core principles—the company’s ecosystem, services revenue, and earnings growth are all real—but rather a wait to see what Ternus does with all that he has been given.