Apple: The biggest bite
Stellar first-quarter results showed Apple doing what Apple does better than anyone else on the planet. While the other tech giants are betting any number of farms on chasing the next moonshot, Apple continues to design, build and sell hardware on an unparalleled scale at profit margins that are on the US end of the fat scale. There are now more than 2.5-billion active Apple devices humming along in the world.
Revenue for the first quarter was up 16% year on year to $143.8bn, driven largely by a 23% increase in iPhone sales as consumers piled into the new iPhone 17 family, as well as a very welcome return to form in Greater China, where sales were up 38% to $25.5bn.
CEO Tim Cook clearly knows his way around a supply chain, and the company’s gross profit margins are sitting pretty at a muscular 48%. Despite what Cook described as “a remarkable, record-breaking quarter”, investor reaction was muted, and the share price rose by less than 1% in after-hours trading.
Concerns have been raised about how sustainable the sales boom is, a rising cost base driven by a global shortage of memory chips, and a worry that the company might get left behind by its peer group in the race to roll out AI functionality.
Apple has kept its powder dry instead of rushing to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into developing chips, AI models and data centres, restricting itself to a few clever acquisitions and a partnership approach that is conservative but may well prove to be deeply strategic.
Rémy Cointreau: Hard stuff goes soft
These are troubling times for producers of the hard stuff, with increased awareness of health and wellness issues as well as the expense of a night on the lash leading to a generation who’d rather stay at home nursing a cheeky kombucha.
The trend is particularly prevalent in the US, where a Gallup study reported that in 2025 a mere 50% of adults aged 18 to 34 had so much as a sniff of alcohol, and where Forbes is predicting that the market for low- and no-alcohol beverages will grow by 25% in 2026.
Some celebrity-driven brands are bucking the trend, with the likes of Casamigos flying off the shelf just in case a couple of shots will get you looking like George Clooney. But for a more old-fashioned spirit such as cognac, demand has been dropping off a cliff. Rémy Cointreau has a range of spirits in its portfolio, but its profitability has historically been heavily dependent on its cognac brands, Rémy Martin and Louis XIII, and it has reported double-digit declines in revenue in the past two years.
Sales in China have been on the slide for three years, and the company finds itself sitting on about €1.8bn of maturing inventory, equivalent to two years of annual revenue.
Amid all the gloom, it is encouraging to find a sniff of good news on the official cognac.fr website, which lists consumption by region. While a mere 20-million bottles were shipped to the whole of Europe in 2025, plucky little South Africa managed to gobble a spectacular 10.5-million bottles in a performance that is punching well above its weight.
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