Prediction: Nvidia Will Overtake Apple in Stock Buybacks and Dividends Under New Apple CEO John Ternus

Apple's trailing-12-month buybacks have declined from a $100 billion peak to $82.2 billion as the company shifts capital toward product investment under new CEO John Ternus, while product sales rose 18.1% year over year in its latest reported quarter. Nvidia returned 60% of fiscal-year-to-date free cash flow to shareholders, above its 50% target, including $19.73 billion in buybacks and $6.05 billion in dividends in its latest quarter. Nvidia expects its Rubin platform to represent 20% of Q3 fiscal 2027 data-center revenue and is guiding for 70% fiscal 2028 revenue growth, potentially enabling it to surpass Apple in annual buybacks next year.

Analysis

The investable issue is not the absolute size of capital returns but the change in incremental capital allocation. AAPL can sustain a premium multiple only if higher R&D, component prepayments, and new-category spending produce a visible revenue vector beyond replacement-cycle hardware; otherwise, reduced repurchases mechanically lowers EPS support while raising execution-risk discount rates. Any leadership-transition premise should be independently verified before trading: an unverified CEO claim materially weakens the article's central conclusion.

NVDA's return of excess cash is supportive at the margin, but it is not the core valuation driver: data-center revenue conversion, gross-margin durability through the platform transition, and hyperscaler capex budgets remain decisive. A rapid next-generation product mix shift can lift revenue but also introduces supply-chain and yield risk for TSMC, HBM suppliers, and advanced packaging; a shortfall would be more damaging to NVDA's multiple than buybacks are beneficial. The second-order beneficiary of a credible AAPL hardware investment cycle would be AVGO/QCOM/TSM rather than AAPL alone, provided design content rises rather than merely unit volumes.

Over 1-3 months, the likely catalyst path is earnings guidance and evidence of product-led gross-margin expansion, not capital-return headlines. Over 6-18 months, AAPL faces a binary outcome: successful ecosystem monetization can re-rate it as a growth platform, while higher spending without a new profit pool shifts it toward lower-ROIC consumer hardware economics. Consensus appears too willing to equate lower buybacks with innovation; capital redeployment is value-accretive only if returns exceed the implicit return from retiring equity at AAPL's prevailing multiple.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Maintain a 1-3 month relative-value long NVDA / short AAPL position, dollar-neutral and sized at 1.5-2.0% gross per leg. The thesis is divergent earnings revision breadth rather than buyback optics; take profit if NVDA materially outperforms by 15% or if AAPL delivers product-driven gross-margin and revenue guidance above consensus.
• Do not initiate a directional AAPL trade solely on the purported management and capital-allocation shift. Establish an alert around the next earnings release: consider a long only if management quantifies incremental investment, preserves operating-margin guidance, and identifies a monetizable hardware/software category; absent those disclosures, reduced repurchase support is a negative EPS-quality signal.
• For supply-chain exposure, watch long TSM versus AAPL as a 6-12 month expression of rising leading-edge silicon and packaging intensity. Enter only after confirming incremental AAPL wafer/content commitments or a raised TSM advanced-node outlook; falsify on weaker smartphone build forecasts or evidence that investment is largely opex rather than semiconductor content.
• Avoid treating NVDA's capital return as downside protection. Hedge any NVDA long with defined-risk downside puts around the next data-center guidance event if hyperscaler capex commentary weakens; the key stop is a guidance reset tied to platform-transition supply, yields, or gross margin rather than a change in repurchase pace.