This week, five “Magnificent Seven” members — Amazon (AMZN +1.21%), Alphabet (GOOGL +0.20%)(GOOG +0.34%), Microsoft, Meta Platforms (META 0.55%), and Apple (AAPL +3.26%) — reported quarterly results, and the headlines all looked great. Calling out some of the highlights, Meta’s revenue jumped 33%, Alphabet’s Google Cloud revenue soared 63% year over year, and Amazon’s cloud computing business grew at its highest rate in 15 quarters.

But four of these five companies have been spending huge sums of cash to produce this kind of growth. And some of them even used their latest quarterly updates as opportunities to raise their already massive 2026 capital expenditure budgets.

One of these companies’ earnings reports, however, looked much different from the rest: Apple’s. The iPhone maker posted accelerating growth without committing enormous spending on AI infrastructure — and it did this while seeing accelerating growth in its high-margin services business, too.

Here are four reasons why I think Apple was the best report of the bunch — and the best stock to buy out of the group, too.

1. Accelerating revenue growth

Apple’s fiscal second quarter of 2026 (the period ended March 28, 2026) revenue of $111.2 billion was up 17% year over year, and earnings per share climbed 22%. Both numbers represented a step up from the prior quarter, when fiscal Q1 revenue grew 16% and earnings per share rose 19%.

And the company’s biggest segment — iPhone — saw revenue increase 22% year over year to $57 billion, with management calling the iPhone 17 the most popular lineup in Apple’s history.

Further, the overall business benefited from strong momentum in the key Greater China market, where revenue jumped 28% to $20.5 billion.

Looking ahead, Apple’s strong momentum should persist. The company guided fiscal third-quarter revenue to grow 14% to 17% — well above the roughly 10% Wall Street had been expecting.

2. This high-margin segment is accelerating

Apple’s high-margin services business — which includes the App Store, Apple TV, Apple Music, Apple Pay, iCloud, AppleCare, and advertising — has been a core part of the bull case for years. And last quarter, it stepped on the gas.

Apple’s fiscal second-quarter services revenue of nearly $31 billion was up 16% year over year — an acceleration from 14% growth in fiscal Q1 and 13.5% growth across all of fiscal 2025. With services running at a roughly 77% gross margin against about 39% for products, this segment’s acceleration significantly bolsters the bull case for Apple stock. In addition, this acceleration is occurring amid the rise of AI services, suggesting the company may be finding ways to benefit from the AI boom.

Feeding its services business, Apple boasts an active installed base topping 2.5 billion devices. And management reaffirmed plans to introduce ads in Apple Maps in the U.S. and Canada this summer — a small but telling reminder that there are still levers to pull on the services side to further engage and monetize this huge user base.

3. Financial discipline while peers chase AI

Then there’s what Apple isn’t doing.

Two of the companies that reported this week raised their 2026 capital expenditure plans. Alphabet now expects to spend $180 billion to $190 billion this year, up from a prior range of $175 billion to $185 billion. And Meta lifted its range to $125 billion to $145 billion (from $115 billion to $135 billion). Meanwhile, Microsoft revealed that it expects calendar 2026 capital expenditures to total around $190 billion, and Amazon kept its already huge 2026 plan at roughly $200 billion. Combined, that’s well over half a trillion dollars of planned capital expenditures in just one year.

Apple, by contrast, spent only about $13 billion on capital expenditures across all of fiscal 2025, and its capital expenditures for the first two quarters of fiscal 2026 have totaled just $4.3 billion (down from $6 billion in the same period last year).

Of course, Apple is still investing in AI, but in a different way. It’s collaborating with Google on foundation models to power Siri. And Apple Intelligence continues rolling out across its product line — but it’s doing so without bankrolling its own hyperscale data center build-out. That could become a meaningful free cash flow advantage if Apple can still deliver good AI to its users without spending like its peers are.

4. A roadmap that could keep the story going

And Apple may have an unprecedented product pipeline in the works.

On Apple’s fiscal second-quarter earnings call, CEO Tim Cook said the company is bringing “a more personalized Siri to users coming this year.”

Further, incoming CEO John Ternus, who steps into the role on Sept. 1, pointed to what he called “an incredible roadmap ahead.”

Even more, technology reporter Mark Gurman, well-known for his Apple scoops, recently asserted that Cook is leaving Ternus “with a tailwind of an unprecedented 10 new product categories launching in the next few years.” Showing how significant this would be, Gurman added that Cook has debuted only three new product categories since 2011.

There are risks, of course. For instance, higher memory costs could weigh on margins later this year. Additionally, a CEO transition introduces some execution risk. And then there’s valuation risk: shares currently command a price-to-earnings ratio in the mid-thirties.

Still, with Apple’s revenue growth accelerating, services accelerating alongside it, and Apple sidestepping the AI capex arms race, the iPhone maker’s quarter looks like the most attractive of the five to me — and I think the stock is worth its premium valuation.