Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company – and everyone else – is seeing inflationary pressure in an interview with CNBC’s Julia Boorstin on Thursday.
Certainly, so far, inflation hasn’t hurt Apple’s business, which reported rising gross margins in the holiday 2021 quarter. Apple hasn’t yet raised prices in response to inflation in the United States.
“We try to price our products for the value that we deliver and we are seeing inflationary pressure,” Cook said. “I think everybody’s seeing inflationary pressure. There’s no two ways about that.”
The consumer price index, an metric measuring price increases across a basket of consumer goods, rose 7% in December from a year earlier, its fastest annual pace in nearly 40 years.
On a earnings call with analysts, Cook expanded on how inflation is affecting Apple’s business and gave an example of shipping costs.
“We’re seeing inflation and it’s factored into our gross margin and opex that [Apple CFO] Luca [Maestri] reviewed with you earlier,” Cook said. “Logistics, as I’ve mentioned on a previous call, is very elevated in terms of the cost of moving things around.”
Cook said that he hoped the increased costs would be temporary.
“I would hope that at least a portion of that is transitory, but the world has changed and we’ll see,” Cook said.
MacDailyNews Take: The bad ship USS Transitory has sailed, and subsequently sunk, quite some time ago, but it’s good to have dreams, albeit of the pipe variety, we guess.
‘Tis best to get a handle on inflation, if you know how, while you still can. – MacDailyNews, May 11, 2021
Earlier this month, Interactive Brokers founder Thomas Peterffy said, “Inflation is 7% — 1% or 2% [in interest rate hikes] doesn’t mean anything. If they really wanted to stop inflation, they would have to raise rates to 4%, 5%, 6%.”
Inflation is repudiation. — Calvin Coolidge
When a business or an individual spends more than it makes, it goes bankrupt. When government does it, it sends you the bill. And when government does it for 40 years, the bill comes in two ways: higher taxes and inflation. Make no mistake about it, inflation is a tax and not by accident. — Ronald Reagan
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