Advertising Growth as a High-Margin Engine

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Apple Inc.’s fourth-quarter revenue edged past analysts’ estimates despite a surprise sales decline in China, where it’s been struggling to stage a comeback.

Total sales rose 7.9% to $102.5 billion in the period, which ended Sept. 27, the company said in a statement Thursday. That slightly beat the $102.2 billion average estimate. The company benefited from stronger-than-expected services growth, helping offset the China slowdown. The Mac and wearables division also performed better than anticipated.

Revenue from greater China fell 3.6% to $14.5 billion, well short of the $16.4 billion that analysts projected. The results renewed concerns that Apple is losing ground in a former growth market.

The company faces mounting competition from local smartphone providers in China and has struggled to offer artificial intelligence features in the country.

Meanwhile Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud unit posted the strongest growth rate in almost three years, reassuring investors who were concerned that the largest seller of rented computing power was losing ground to rivals.

Amazon Web Services posted revenue of $33 billion, an increase of 20% from the prior year and the biggest year-over-year rise since the end of 2022. Analysts, on average, estimated 18% growth.

Investor expectations for the cloud business were relatively low heading into Thursday’s report after the company in recent quarters cited constraints in getting new data centers online. Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy and other executives had said they were optimistic about the business, though they stopped short of forecasting a reacceleration of growth.

Today's show features:

• Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Analyst for E-Commerce and Athleisure Poonam Goyal, Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow and Eric Clark, Chief Investment Officer at Accuvest Global Advisors, examine quarterly earnings from Amazon
• Jay Goldberg, Senior Analyst, Semiconductors & Electronics with Seaport Research Partners, Bloomberg News Managing Editor for Global Consumer Tech Mark Gurman, and Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow react to Apple earnings

• Bloomberg News Health Reporter Jessica Nix on the fight between Novo Nordisk and Pfizer over the acquisition of Metsera
• Caroline Freund, Dean of the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy, on the latest meeting between US President Donald Trump and China’s Xi Jinping

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