Why stepped back and why the number two getting promoted? Yeah, I mean, this is really not that interesting in the sense that this has been long planned. Apple has been telegraphing this for the last year or so. If you recall, at the end of last year, one of Luca Maestri, his top two deputies, Ciara Casey, she resigned and then later became the CFO of Sonos. And to me at the time, that became pretty clear that they were preparing for a transition and that it was not going to be her job, but rather Kevin Perec's job. Kevin Perec had a series of responsibilities related to market research, financial analysis, preparation for earnings, investor relations. And then he picked up Ciara Casey's responsibility over financial planning and analysis at the end of last year. He actually moved into her office at that time, and he has been the heir apparent for several months now. To Luca Maestri.

He had been shadowing Maestri. He had been working very closely with Apple's executive team in Tim Cook. So, this is something that has been in the works for several months now. Luca just turned 60, right? He's been in the corporate environment. He's been a CFO for decades now. He's obviously made a lot of money at Apple. Luca, actually, at some points in his career, has commuted many, many miles to the Apple campus. This is obviously a very tough role. It's not a role you want to be in for more than a decade, probably with everything at stake. He took over for Peter Oppenheimer in 2014, so it made sense. The bigger picture here is you're sort of probably going to see a big turnover of Apple's executive team over the next few years, and this strategy where they're not really allowing these executives to fully retire and just, you know, play golf or, you know, fly

their planes or what have you, and have them stick around a smaller role. This is now the third executive in a row in the last four years that we've seen do this. The question is, how long is Luca going to stick around in this new role? And then one thing I know investors are curious about, Perec. Everything I've been told and everything that I believe is that he's ready for this role. And I don't expect any hiccups. As you say, he's going to be overseeing information technology and real estate functions, we understand. But in that reduced role. Meanwhile, Mark, all of this is in the broader context of they've got to still be selling phones, they've got to be innovating. And September the ninth, we understand, is and we're going to be getting our eyes on the latest new phones. Yeah, September 9th, the iPhone 16 line, new AirPods, new Apple watches will all

be introduced, and then we'll get the performance of how these phones did. From Kevin Grech at the end of January during his first earnings call as CFO. And all expectations are we're going to see some decent growth in the holiday period over the iPhone 15 Pro. There were no major new Apple watches a year ago, no major new AirPods a year ago, but they've sort of set themselves up for a little bit of a layup to give themselves some nice growth in the holiday period.

Apple’s Maestri to Hand Off CEO Role to Kevan Parekh

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