Tim Cook Signed Off With a Warning About a "100-Year Flood"

Keypoints:

• • Tim Cook led his final earnings call as Apple CEO on July 30, after 15 years and 90 calls total
  • Cook warned memory chip prices are behaving unlike anything he's seen in his career
  • John Ternus officially becomes CEO on September 1, with Cook moving to executive chairman
  • Apple's market value has grown from roughly $350 billion to nearly $5 trillion under Cook

On July 30, after fifteen years and ninety earnings calls, Tim Cook signed off from his final appearance as Apple's CEO with a message Wall Street won't forget. 

The numbers gave him plenty to be proud of on the way out. Apple beat Wall Street's expectations with $109.4 billion in revenue for the quarter, up 16% from a year earlier. It's a genuinely strong close to a tenure that began back in 2011. 

Under Cook, the company grew from roughly $350 billion in market value to nearly $5 trillion, becoming the first company in history to cross $1 trillion, $2 trillion, $3 trillion, and briefly $5 trillion in value! But Cook didn't spend his final call only looking backward. 

Before opening the floor to analyst questions, he flagged a real concern hanging over the next chapter of Apple's future under new leadership. 

He called the current memory chip pricing environment a "100-year flood," language he's never used in a decade and a half running the company. It's a sign of just how unusual the current shortage looks even to someone who's navigated plenty of supply chain crunches before.

That shortage isn't abstract for Apple either. The company already raised prices on Mac and iPad models back in June specifically because of it, and rising component costs are exactly the kind of pressure John Ternus will be managing from day one. 

Ternus, Apple's senior vice president of hardware engineering, officially takes the CEO title on September 1, with Cook staying on as executive chairman rather than leaving the company entirely. He inherits a business at its financial peak, but also one facing a supply chain problem its outgoing CEO felt was serious enough to name on his way out the door.