Dive Brief:

• Apple’s newly-minted CFO, Kevan Parekh, will receive a bump in his annual salary as part of his latest role at the technology giant, pushing his base pay to $1 million, the company said in a Friday securities filing.
• As expected, Parekh, who previously served as Apple’s vice president of financial planning and analysis, became CFO of the company effective Jan. 1 in a planned succession, according to the filing. He replaced Luca Maestri, who announced last year that he was planning to step down as the company’s finance chief after more than 10 years in the post.
• “We think Parekh will continue Maestri’s playbook and this should be good news for Apple shareholders,” William Kerwin, equity analyst for Morningstar Research Services, said in an email. “In terms of challenges, we think maintaining profit expansion in the face of antitrust headwinds that could impact services revenues will be a key focus.”

Dive Insight:

The finance leadership change comes as Apple is closing in on a $4 trillion stock market valuation amid artificial intelligence investments that have boosted sluggish iPhone sales, Reuters recently reported.

The tech giant posted $94.9 billion in revenues for its fiscal 2024 fourth quarter ended Sept. 28, an increase of 6% over the year-earlier period, according to results released on Oct. 31.

“The level of intensity that we're putting into AI has increased a lot, and you maybe don't see the full extent of it because we've also had some internal reallocation of the base of engineering resources that we have within the company,” Maestri said in an earnings call at the time.

Maestri oversaw a period of tremendous margin expansion for Apple, along with rising leverage towards the firm’s goal of being net cash neutral longer-term, according to Kerwin.

“We expect both of these trends to continue under Parekh and predict continuity in Apple’s strategy in the transition,” he said.

Maestri will stay on at Apple as leader of the company’s corporate services teams, including information systems, technology, information security and real estate development, reporting directly to Apple CEO Tim Cook, the company said last year in a press release announcing its finance leadership transition.

“We’re fortunate that we will continue to benefit from the leadership and insight that have been the hallmark of [Maestri’s] tenure at the company,” Cook said in the release.

He added that Parekh’s “sharp intellect, wise judgment, and financial brilliance make him the perfect choice to be Apple’s next CFO.”

Parekh has served at Apple for more than a decade. Prior to his role as head of FP&A, he led worldwide sales, retail, and marketing finance, according to the release. He began his tenure leading the financial support of Apple’s product marketing, internet sales and services, and engineering teams.

Before joining Apple, Parekh held various senior leadership roles at Thomson Reuters and General Motors.

The Friday announcement comes just on the heels of the company’s agreement to pay $95 million to settle a proposed class action lawsuit alleging that its voice-activated digital assistant Siri violated users' privacy, as reported by Bloomberg Law.

Meanwhile, Apple is also facing an antitrust lawsuit from the Department of Justice claiming the company has maintained monopoly power in the smartphone market.