Bank of America has removed Apple from its U.S. 1 List, according to FinancialJuice and an Investing.com headline on 30 October 2026. In its note, as quoted by Wall St Engine on X, BofA wrote: “We lower our F27 iPhone est. by 9mn units to 247mn (vs. St at 260mn).”
By our arithmetic, BofA’s new fiscal 2027 estimate of 247 million iPhones is 13 million units, or 5.0 percent, below the Street’s 260 million. Wall St Engine says the bank warns Wall Street is underestimating the impact of rising memory prices on Apple’s margins. These are analyst estimates, not Apple’s figures.
Short explainer · BofA Cuts 9M iPhones to 247M on Memory Costs
A vertical news Short narrated from this piece’s headline and opening line.
Business Pill · The Memory Wall
An evergreen Business Engineer explainer on the memory wall. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss Apple, BofA or this note.
The key insight: Bank of America has removed Apple from its U.S. 1 List and, according to its note as quoted on X, cut its fiscal 2027 iPhone estimate by 9 million units to 247 million, 5.0 percent below the Street’s 260 million by our arithmetic, citing the impact of rising memory prices on margins.
According to Wall St Engine’s summary of the note, BofA estimates memory costs could reduce iPhone gross margins by 900 basis points before offsets, or roughly 500 basis points after pricing, product mix and cost adjustments. The post says that translates to an estimated 250-basis-point hit to Apple’s companywide gross margin.
The post says BofA now projects Apple’s total gross margin at 43.6% to 44.6% by the March quarter, against a Wall Street estimate of 47.7%. By our arithmetic, that range is 3.1 to 4.1 percentage points below the Street.
Fiscal 2027 iPhone unit estimates in BofA’s note as quoted by Wall St Engine: the Street at 260 million, BofA’s implied prior 256 million (our arithmetic) and BofA’s new 247 million. Analyst estimates, not company figures.
What Was Posted on X
TrendForce: PC DRAM prices are rising 13%-18% QoQ in Q4, even as notebook shipments are expected to fall another 9% after a 14% decline in Q3.
Wall St Engine, citing TrendForce, posts that PC DRAM prices are rising 13% to 18% quarter on quarter in Q4, while notebook shipments are expected to fall another 9% after a 14% decline in Q3. These are the poster’s figures, attributed to TrendForce.
Counting the Cut
A 9 million cut that lands at 247 million implies a previous BofA estimate of 256 million units, by our arithmetic, so the cut is about 3.5 percent. On the margin estimates, the offsets BofA describes recover roughly 400 of the 900 basis points, about 44 percent, also by our arithmetic.
Where This Sits in the Memory Story
The note lands in a week of memory-price news. We reported on 29 October that Apple’s own filings flag memory costs: its March and June 2026 10-Qs warn of rising costs for “storage (NAND) and memory (DRAM)”, while the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple “for years bullied flash-storage makers into steep discounts—until AI hyperscalers bid up prices and gobbled up supply”.
On the supplier side, Kioxia reported a July-to-September operating margin of 80.4 percent by our arithmetic, and said, as quoted in our coverage, that its revenue rose primarily on higher average selling prices from data centre customers focused on generative AI. Separately, we reported that Apple’s Ascend.io pact is its 13th deal disclosed under the EU’s Digital Markets Act this year.
The Structural Read
As we read the quoted note, the cut is about margins as much as units: BofA’s 43.6% to 44.6% gross margin range sits 3.1 to 4.1 points under the Street’s 47.7%, by our arithmetic.
As we read it alongside our prior coverage, the bank is pricing on the buyer side what Kioxia’s 80.4 percent margin shows on the supplier side: memory makers say data-centre demand is lifting average selling prices.
As we read the timing, the note lands days before Apple’s September-quarter report on 2 November, per a TIKR preview; the posts we read do not include a comment from Apple.
BofA’s note, as quoted by Wall St Engine on X, 30 October 2026
“We lower our F27 iPhone est. by 9mn units to 247mn (vs. St at 260mn).”
Three Implications
FOR APPLE Its March and June 2026 10-Qs warn of rising costs for storage (NAND) and memory (DRAM), according to our prior coverage.
FOR MEMORY MAKERS Kioxia said its revenue rose primarily on higher average selling prices from data centre customers focused on generative AI, according to our prior coverage of its results.
FOR INVESTORS BofA’s projected 43.6% to 44.6% gross margin compares with a Street estimate of 47.7%, according to the post’s summary of the note.
The framework says “The AI race has a new bottleneck, and it’s not what most observers expect.”
As we read it, BofA’s note is about the same bottleneck seen from a phone maker’s cost line. The framework was published in December 2025 and does not discuss Apple, BofA or iPhone estimates.
What Is Not Established
We have not read BofA’s note itself. The removal from the U.S. 1 List is reported by FinancialJuice and Investing.com; the iPhone, margin and Street figures come from Wall St Engine’s quotation and summary of the note, and we could not confirm them in a second source. The summary does not name the analyst. The posts we read do not include a comment from Apple, which is due to report its September-quarter results on 2 November, according to a TIKR preview.
This Week In The AI Supercycle
Execution Fault Lines, Concentrated Demand, and Geopolitical Firewalls
This week’s issue: the AI build is not short of demand for its parts. It is short of cheap money, and its end revenue rests on a narrow base of large, often venture-funded buyers.
BofA has removed Apple from its U.S. 1 List and, according to a quotation of its note on X, cut its fiscal 2027 iPhone estimate by 9 million units to 247 million, 13 million below the Street, citing the impact of rising memory prices on margins.
A note on sourcing. The list removal is reported by FinancialJuice and Investing.com. Estimates and quotations from BofA’s note come from Wall St Engine’s post on X; we have not read the note. Apple, Kioxia and WSJ facts come from our earlier coverage. Figures labelled our arithmetic are our own calculations.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
