Apple is the most-owned stock in value investing. Berkshire Hathaway still holds the largest single dollar position in AAPL of any institutional investor on record, after trimming repeatedly through 2024 and 2025. The framework question is no longer whether Buffett liked Apple in 2016 at a 13x P/E. It is whether the canon of value investing, applied cold to the 2026 numbers, still says the same thing at a 36x P/E.
We ran AAPL through all seven named-investor frameworks on invest-like.com in parallel and printed the scores side by side. Every number below is pulled from the production scoring tables on 26 May 2026, the same scores that power /buffett/aapl/ and every public API response for ticker AAPL.
TL;DR - AAPL on all 7 frameworks
| Framework | Score | Grade | Verdict | Criteria met |
|---|
| Greenblatt (Magic Formula) | 91 | C | unclear | 2 / 5 |
| Munger (mental models) | 80 | A | yes | 9 / 11 |
| Graham (defensive) | 78 | B | yes | 3 / 7 |
| Smith (Fundsmith) | 75 | B | yes | 8 / 12 |
| Lynch (GARP) | 65 | B | unclear | 3 / 6 |
| Fisher (growth quality) | 64 | C | unclear | 6 / 10 |
| Buffett (moat + quality) | 62 | C | unclear | 6 / 9 |
Cross-framework average: 73.6 out of 100. Minimum score: 62 (Buffett). All seven scores clear the 60 pass-threshold the invest-like data study uses, which means AAPL is one of the 47 US-listed stocks that pass all 7 value-investing frameworks at a B-minus or better, alongside names like Alphabet, NVIDIA and Visa. Source: the cross-framework consensus study, data snapshot 26 May 2026.
Headline numbers that drive every framework:
- Price: $308.82. Market cap: $4.54 trillion.
- ROIC trailing twelve months: 49.6%. Five-year average ROIC: 53.5%.
- Gross margin: 47.9%. Operating margin: 32.6%. Net margin: 27.2%.
- P/E TTM: 36.0. P/B: 41.5. EV/EBIT: 33.5.
- PEG ratio: 1.25.
- Five-year revenue CAGR: 3.3%. Five-year EPS CAGR: 7.2%.
- Debt to equity: 0.80. Current ratio: 1.07. Net debt to EBITDA: 0.30.
- Owner-earnings yield: 2.24%. Earnings yield: 2.78%.
- Dividend yield: 0.35%. Share count CAGR five-year: -2.7% (aggressive buyback).
- AAOIFI halal status: compliant. Interest-bearing debt to market cap: 1.73%.
The rest of this post walks through each framework, explains why it scored AAPL the way it did, and surfaces where the seven authors agree and where they part ways.
Why Apple is the value-investing canon's most consequential test case
Buffett's 2016 purchase of Apple was the largest single position Berkshire ever took. At the time, AAPL was a 13x earnings business with a 25% ROIC, an iPhone refresh cycle that was beginning to slow, and a Services segment that Wall Street was just learning to model. Ten years later, the iPhone refresh cycle has slowed further, Services has compounded to roughly $100 billion in revenue at a 70%-plus margin, and the multiple has nearly tripled. Same playbook, completely different price.
The framework question is what the seven authors would do with that math today. ROIC is still elite. The moat is arguably stronger because Services is a higher-quality stream than hardware. But revenue growth has collapsed from the 2015-2021 average to roughly 3% per year. EPS growth is being driven by a 2.7% per year buyback as much as by underlying business growth. And the multiple is sitting at the high end of the company's two-decade range. Run AAPL through the frameworks and the seams show in different places than they did for NVIDIA, but they show.
Buffett-fit: 62 out of 100, verdict unclear (the lowest framework score)
The invest-like Buffett scorer marks AAPL as 6 of 9 criteria passing. The three failures cluster on the price half of the test: owner-earnings yield is 2.24% against a 5% floor, earnings yield is 2.78% against a 5% floor, and the EV/EBIT of 33.5 sits above the multiple Buffett would historically pay for a business growing at 3%.
What passes:
- ROIC of 49.6% blows past the 15% minimum. AAPL's ROIC is more than three times the Buffett floor.
- Gross margin of 47.9% passes the 40% bar.
- 5-year profitability: yes, never a loss year in the window.
- Net debt to EBITDA: 0.30x. The fortress balance sheet test passes despite a meaningfully larger gross debt load than NVDA.
- FCF to net income at 0.88 clears the 0.80 cash-quality floor.
- Debt to equity at 0.80 clears the 1.0 ceiling, but just barely.
What this score means in plain English: Apple is a wonderful business that has compressed its margin of safety. The Buffett Brain breaks the overall score into five pillars from the GPT-4o-driven qualitative cache, and the split is dramatic: moat 91, durability 80, management 28, valuation 51, financial health 15. The 91/100 moat score is the highest in the seven-framework breakdown. The 15/100 financial-health score is the lowest. That gap is the story of why AAPL fails three of nine Buffett criteria: the moat is intact, the balance sheet has gotten more aggressive (debt-financed buybacks are not free), and the multiple offers no cushion.
The Buffett scorer's headline reads "Apple's ROIC of 49.6% indicates a strong moat, but a P/E of 36 suggests valuation concerns." That is the framework speaking, and it is a softer version of what Buffett himself signaled by trimming the position through 2024 and 2025.
Graham: 78 out of 100, verdict yes (the most surprising score)
Most readers will guess Graham would hate AAPL at a 36 P/E and a 41 P/B. On the three classic defensive-screen lines, AAPL fails:
- P/E of 36.0 against the 15.0 Graham ceiling: fail.
- P/B of 41.5 against the 1.5 Graham ceiling: fail (catastrophically).
- Earnings yield of 2.78% against the 7% Graham floor: fail.
So how does AAPL score 78? Because the invest-like Graham scorer applies the enterprising-investor weighting on top of the defensive criteria, which gives partial credit for the three things AAPL does pass: five years of unbroken profitability, the largest market cap and most liquid float in the value-investing universe (a proxy for Graham's "adequate size" criterion), and a dividend record. Those structural passes outscore the three "valuation" fails because the scorer weights them as the foundation of the company surviving long enough for the multiple to compress.
This is the cleanest case where the headline score and the lay reading of the framework diverge. A strict five-rule Graham defensive screen on AAPL would fail every valuation line and the verdict would be a hard no. The invest-like implementation gives AAPL a B+ because the structural pillars (profitable for decades, liquid, established) are pristine. A reader using AAPL as a Graham test case should know which version they are reading. We document both in /methodology/.
The summary the scorer prints is honest about the split: "Meets 3/7 Graham criteria - classic deep-value candidate." That phrasing is generous; AAPL is the opposite of a deep-value candidate by any normal definition. It is a quality candidate that clears Graham's structural half while failing the price half outright.
Fisher: 64 out of 100, verdict unclear
Phil Fisher would have loved 2016 Apple. The invest-like Fisher scorer tests for ten things: gross margin above 50%, revenue CAGR above 10%, EPS growth that outpaces revenue (operational leverage), ROIC above 15%, operating margin above 15%, net margin above 10%, conservative balance sheet, FCF quality, no share-count dilution, and a P/E tolerance ceiling at 35.
AAPL passes 6 of those 10. The four fails are:
- Gross margin 47.9% against the 50% Fisher floor: just fails.
- Revenue CAGR 3.3% against the 10% floor: fails by a wide margin.
- EPS CAGR 7.2% against the 15% floor: fails.
- P/E 36.0 against the 35 ceiling: fails by a hair.
What passes is the rest of the quality stack:
- ROIC 49.6% against 15%.
- Operating margin 32.6%, net margin 27.2%, both deep above their floors.
- Net debt to EBITDA 0.30x, FCF to net income 0.88x.
- Share count shrinking at 2.7% per year (the aggressive buyback that drives Apple's EPS growth).
Fisher is the framework most willing to pay up for genuine pricing power and durable growth. AAPL scores only 64 because the growth half of Fisher's test is the part that has eroded most over the last five years. The 47.9% gross margin tells Fisher the moat is still real, but the 3.3% revenue CAGR tells him this is no longer the compounding machine he optimised for. The score reflects exactly that split: high-quality and slow-growing, with a multiple still priced for the high-growth version.
Lynch: 65 out of 100, verdict unclear
The Lynch score on AAPL is the surprise that mirrors NVDA in reverse. NVDA's PEG of 0.52 passed Lynch's signature test mathematically while the framework's spirit said no. AAPL's PEG of 1.25 fails Lynch's signature test mathematically but the framework's spirit is more open to the question.
AAPL passes 3 of 6 Lynch criteria: positive net margin, manageable debt and positive free cash flow. The fails are:
- PEG of 1.25 against the 1.0 Lynch ceiling: fails.
- EPS CAGR 7.2% against the 15% growth floor: fails.
- Revenue CAGR 3.3% against the 10% revenue floor: fails.
So why is the verdict "unclear" rather than a hard no, and the score 65? Because Lynch carved out an explicit category for "stalwarts" - large, well-known, slow-growing businesses bought for 30 to 50% appreciation over a few years rather than 10-baggers. AAPL is the textbook stalwart. The Lynch scorer recognises that the GARP framework was built for the small-and-mid-cap "fast growers" Lynch made his name on, but it tolerates "stalwarts" at higher valuations if the moat is intact and the dividend supports the wait.
This is the second-cleanest "score does not match raw criteria" output in the seven-framework set. By the line-item count, AAPL is a 3/6 fail. By the framework spirit, applied to a stalwart, it lands at a B-minus and an "unclear" verdict.
Greenblatt (Magic Formula): 91 out of 100, verdict unclear (the highest score)
Joel Greenblatt's Magic Formula ranks every stock on combined earnings yield and ROIC, then buys the top decile. AAPL passes 2 of 5 line-item criteria:
- ROIC of 49.6% against the 25% floor: pass, by a wide margin.
- Gross margin of 47.9% against the 30% floor: pass.
- EBIT/EV yield of 3.0% against the 10% floor: fail.
- EV/EBIT of 33.5 against the 12 ceiling: fail.
- Earnings yield of 2.78% against the 6% floor: fail.
By line-item count, this is a 2/5 fail. But the rank-based Magic Formula is different from line-item screening. The Magic Formula ranks AAPL's ROIC against the entire US universe; AAPL's 49.6% ROIC ranks in the top 2 to 3% of the 6,621-stock apples-to-apples cohort. The earnings-yield rank lands in the bottom quintile. Combined, the rank-based formula puts AAPL in the top decile on quality, the bottom quintile on price, with a combined rank that is borderline-acceptable on a 12-month hold.
The invest-like scorer compresses that into a 91/100 score because the ROIC excellence dominates the formula by design. The "unclear" verdict carries the cost-of-price warning: yes, Magic Formula will hold AAPL on the strength of the ROIC pillar, but the framework rotates by design, and a high score today does not mean Greenblatt would hold AAPL through a multi-year stretch of slow growth.
This is the framework that gives AAPL its highest score. The 91 is almost entirely a quality-pillar artifact, which is the cleanest data answer to the question "is Apple's quality still elite by the numbers?" Yes, unambiguously.
Munger: 80 out of 100, verdict yes (the second-highest score)
Munger's mental-models filter is the framework closest in spirit to Buffett's, with three small differences: a slightly higher ROIC floor (18% vs 15%), an explicit "willingness to pay up for quality" with a softer P/E ceiling of 30, and a focus on capital intensity and balance-sheet conservatism.
AAPL passes 9 of 11 Munger criteria:
- ROIC 49.6% against 18%, 5-year ROIC 53.5% against 15%: both pass deeply.
- Gross margin 47.9% against 40%, operating margin 32.6% against 18%, net margin 27.2% against 12%: every quality test clears its floor.
- 5y ROE 164% against 15%: pass (the ROE is inflated by repeated balance-sheet leverage from the buyback).
- Net debt to EBITDA 0.30x against 1.5x: pass.
- Share count shrinking 2.7%/yr and EPS CAGR 7.2% against 8%: borderline pass.
- P/E 36.0 against 30: fail.
Munger's "willing to pay up for quality" softens the P/E test (Buffett's floor at the Wonderful-Fair-Price test is 25; Munger lets it stretch to 30), but AAPL is at 36. The score is 80 and the verdict is "yes" because the 9 passes dominate the math. The one valuation fail is the criterion Munger spent the second half of his career talking about repeatedly in the Daily Journal meetings. "Pay up for quality" was never license to pay any price, and 36 times earnings for a 3%-growth business is the line he flagged in his own commentary as the boundary of the principle.
The Munger verdict is the cleanest framework "yes" Apple gets. It is also the one Munger himself, by his late-life public commentary, was most cautious about.
T. Smith (Fundsmith): 75 out of 100, verdict yes
Terry Smith's Fundsmith framework is the strictest of the three "quality compounder" tests in the set. It uses a 20% ROCE floor (versus Buffett's 15%), a 45% gross margin floor (versus Buffett's 40%), a 95% FCF-to-net-income floor (versus Buffett's 80%), and a P/E ceiling of 35.
AAPL passes 8 of 12 criteria:
- ROCE 62.3% against 20%: pass, big.
- Gross margin 47.9% against 45%, operating margin 32.6% against 20%, net margin 27.2% against 15%: every margin test passes.
- 5y ROCE 53.5% against 18%, 5y ROE 164% against 18%: sustained quality, pass.
- Share count shrinking 2.7%/yr: pass.
- Net debt to EBITDA 0.30x against 1.5x: pass.
- Revenue CAGR 3.3% against 7%: fail.
- EPS CAGR 7.2% against 10%: fail.
- FCF / NI 0.88 against the strict 0.95 floor: fail.
- P/E 36.0 against 35: fail (by a hair).
The four fails are the growth and valuation half of the test, while every margin and capital-allocation test clears. The 8-of-12 pass count drives the 75 score and the "yes" verdict. AAPL is a quality-compounder for Smith with caveats around the growth slowdown and the multiple, not a Smith-style "best of the best" core-portfolio pick. The Fundsmith fund has historically held AAPL at meaningful weight and trimmed it through 2024-2025 in moves that track Berkshire's behaviour.
Where the frameworks agree on AAPL
Despite seven different lenses, four things show up in every scoring breakdown:
- The moat is excellent. Every framework's qualitative read of Apple flags the ecosystem lock-in, Services margin and brand. The Buffett Brain prints a 91/100 moat score, the highest moat reading in the seven-framework set, including ahead of MSFT and NVDA.
- The balance sheet has gotten more aggressive but is still investment-grade. D/E of 0.80, net debt-to-EBITDA of 0.30, current ratio of 1.07. Apple has taken on debt to fund the buyback, but every framework that includes a balance-sheet test still passes AAPL on it.
- Capital allocation is shareholder-friendly to a fault. Share count is shrinking at 2.7% per year, R&D investment is at 8.9% of revenue (healthy), there is no aggressive M&A footprint clogging the income statement. The buyback is large enough that it is doing as much of the EPS-growth lifting as the underlying business.
- Growth has slowed materially. 3.3% revenue CAGR and 7.2% EPS CAGR over five years are not the numbers Buffett bought in 2016 (when the trailing five-year revenue CAGR was 24%). Every framework with a growth floor fails AAPL on it now.
Where the frameworks disagree on AAPL
Three points of disagreement:
- Valuation. Buffett, Munger, Smith, Greenblatt and Fisher all flag the multiple. Graham technically passes the score because of the balance-sheet weighting, but lay-reading Graham would reject the P/E and P/B outright. Lynch's PEG of 1.25 fails the signature test but the "stalwart" carve-out softens it. Only Munger's 80 and Smith's 75 verdicts come back as a clean "yes" despite the multiple, and both flag it.
- Growth. Fisher, Lynch and Smith all encode growth floors that AAPL no longer clears. Buffett's score is more forgiving on growth alone (8% floor) but compounds growth and price into the owner-earnings yield, which fails. The Magic Formula does not test growth directly, which is why Greenblatt's score is the highest.
- Cash quality. Smith's 95% FCF-to-net-income floor fails AAPL (at 88%), while Buffett's 80% floor passes it. The gap matters: Smith's framework explicitly cares about whether reported earnings are translating fully to cash, and the 7 percentage-point gap is the kind of thing he would flag in fund commentary.
Does AAPL make the 47-stock all-7-frameworks cohort?
Yes, but barely. AAPL's minimum framework score is 62 (Buffett), which clears the 60 pass-threshold by 2 points. Its cross-framework average is 73.6 out of 100, which puts it in the middle of the cohort - well above the average for the full 6,621-stock universe, but below NVDA (83.4), and below MSFT (which fails the cohort entirely because Greenblatt and Lynch sit at 59).
The full 47-stock consensus list is in our cross-framework data study. The headline finding there is that 0.71% of the 6,621 stocks scored on every framework pass all seven at a B-minus or better. AAPL is in that cohort by a 2-point margin. The cross-framework view, applied to 6,621 stocks, lists Apple as one of the 47 names that clears every test - but only because Buffett's score clears 60 by the narrowest margin in the cohort.
That is not a recommendation to buy. It is the data answer to a question the value-investing canon implicitly poses: when all seven of these authors are asked the same question today, do they all say yes? On AAPL, with the 60-point B-minus threshold, the answer is yes by a 2-point margin on the strictest framework, which is itself the framework Buffett built.
Halal compliance: is AAPL AAOIFI Standard 21 compliant?
Yes. invest-like.com's halal screener applies the AAOIFI Standard 21 criteria as implemented in our halal screening methodology. AAPL's interest-bearing debt to market cap ratio is 1.73%, well below the 30% AAOIFI ceiling. The business activity (consumer electronics and services) is not on the prohibited-industry list. The non-permissible income ratio (interest income from the cash holdings) is below the 5% threshold.
AAPL shows up on /halal/aapl/ as compliant, and the halal status field in the database (halal_status = 'compliant') is consistent with that. For halal-mode users, the framework results above are unchanged - the AAOIFI test sits on top of the value-investing test as an additional filter, not a replacement. Apple's debt is large in absolute terms ($100B+) but small as a percentage of its $4.5T market cap, which is why the AAOIFI ratio still clears comfortably.
What this means for an investor
The seven-framework breakdown is not a "buy AAPL" or "sell AAPL" signal. It is a structured way to see which value-investing lenses agree on the business and which disagree on the price. Three observations a reader might draw, none of which are advice:
First, every framework agrees the moat is still excellent. The 91/100 moat pillar in the Buffett Brain is the highest moat reading in the seven-framework set. If your edge is owning durable moats and accepting that the multiple sits where it sits, AAPL's moat half of the test is uncontroversially passed.
Second, the framework dispersion on AAPL is much wider than on a cleaner case like NVDA. The lowest score is 62 (Buffett), the highest is 91 (Greenblatt). That 29-point spread is the data signature of a stock where the "buy" and "trim" arguments are both well-founded depending on which criteria you weight. Berkshire's actual behaviour through 2024-2025 (substantial trims, not a full exit) is exactly the position a 73.6 cross-framework average would suggest.
Third, the growth slowdown is the under-discussed risk in any framework lens. 3.3% revenue CAGR over five years is not what the value canon was calibrated against. If the slowdown continues, the multiple has further to compress. If Services accelerates the way the bull case requires, the multiple is defensible.
The Boardroom feature on /boardroom/aapl/ runs the four-investor debate in long form and is the natural follow-on to this post. It lets the four authors argue the growth question directly rather than letting the scorers paper over it.
FAQ
Why does Buffett keep trimming Apple if the framework says it passes?
Both can be true. The invest-like Buffett scorer gives AAPL a 62/100, which is the lowest of the seven framework scores but still clears the 60 pass-threshold. Buffett himself has not exited the position; he has trimmed it from a peak weight in Berkshire's portfolio that was, by his own admission, larger than he was comfortable with at the multiple. A 62 is "still a fit but the margin of safety has compressed", which matches Berkshire's actual behaviour. The frameworks do not capture position-sizing nuance; they answer the more limited question of whether the stock clears each author's quality and price floors at the current snapshot.
Is Apple overvalued?
By Graham's strict defensive rules (P/E above 15, P/B above 1.5), yes - by a wide margin. By Buffett's owner-earnings yield test (above 5%), yes - AAPL's yield is 2.24%. By Greenblatt's earnings-yield ranking, AAPL is in the bottom quintile of the universe on price. By Lynch's PEG (under 1.0), no - AAPL's PEG of 1.25 fails the test by a moderate margin. By Fisher's "tolerable for quality" P/E ceiling of 35, AAPL at 36 is over the line by a hair. The seven-framework view: six say expensive, one (Graham, through the structural weighting) papers over it. The headline is consistent across the canon: AAPL is a great business at a stretched price.
Is AAPL a Buffett stock?
It is a partial Buffett fit. The invest-like Buffett scorer rates AAPL 62 out of 100 with a "C" letter grade and verdict "unclear" - 6 of 9 criteria pass, but the three fails are all on the valuation side. The Buffett Brain breaks this into pillars: moat 91, durability 80, management 28, valuation 51, financial health 15. A 91/100 moat and a 15/100 financial-health pillar is the unusual signature here: the debt-funded buyback has weakened the balance-sheet score in the qualitative cache even as the framework rules still pass. This is exactly the "wonderful business at a premium price, with a weakened safety net" reading that explains why Berkshire has trimmed.
What are good AAPL alternatives in the same sector?
The invest-like 47-stock cross-framework consensus cohort contains several mega-cap tech names with stronger valuation or growth profiles. Alphabet (GOOGL) trades at a similar P/E with stronger revenue growth, and NVIDIA (NVDA) trades at a higher multiple but with materially higher growth that makes its PEG lower. Microsoft (MSFT) is the closest direct comparator on moat quality - the cleanest peer comparisons are on the AAPL vs MSFT, AAPL vs GOOGL and AAPL vs NVDA pages.
Why does Graham give AAPL a "B" if P/E and P/B both fail badly?
Because the invest-like Graham scorer weights the balance-sheet and durability criteria (size, profitability, dividend record) alongside the price criteria (P/E, P/B, earnings yield), and the score is a weighted aggregate. AAPL's 3-of-7 pass count is dominated by an unmatched profitability record (decades without a loss year), the largest float in the value-investing universe, and a paid dividend, which together compensate for the valuation fails. A reader looking for the pure 5-rule Graham defensive screen would reject AAPL on P/E and P/B alone. We document this nuance on the methodology page at /methodology/.
Is Apple halal?
Yes, by AAOIFI Standard 21 as implemented on invest-like. AAPL's interest-bearing debt to market cap is 1.73%, well below the 30% ceiling. Its business activity (consumer electronics and services) is not prohibited. Non-permissible income from cash interest is below the 5% threshold. The halal status field returns "compliant" on every API response for ticker AAPL. Halal-mode users can include AAPL in their watchlist with the standard small purification proportion for interest income; the /halal/aapl/ page surfaces the exact ratios.
How often do these scores update?
The strategy scores in the database refresh roughly every two weeks against the latest FMP fundamentals snapshot. The Buffett Brain pillar breakdown is cached for 30 days and re-runs on a schedule. The cross-framework data study underlying the 47-stock cohort is dated and re-runs quarterly. Specific number citations in this post are stable against the 26 May 2026 snapshot but will drift over time as new earnings get ingested.
Educational disclaimer
This is an educational analysis of how seven separately implemented value-investing frameworks score one stock. It is not investment advice, not a buy or sell recommendation, and not a substitute for reading the original Buffett shareholder letters, Graham's Intelligent Investor, Fisher's Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, Lynch's One Up on Wall Street, Greenblatt's Little Book that Beats the Market, Munger's Poor Charlie's Almanack, or Smith's Investing for Growth. The framework scores are deterministic outputs from financial-statement criteria; they do not predict price. Past performance of Apple stock (or any stock) is not a forecast.
All scores cited in this post come from invest-like.com's strategy_scores and buffett_analyses production tables, snapshot 26 May 2026. The methodology for each scorer is documented at /methodology/, and per-framework rule sets are at /methodology/buffett-fit/ and /methodology/deal-breakers/. The same scoring logic powers every verdict on the production site, including the per-ticker page at /buffett/aapl/ and the public API response at /api/public/verdict/AAPL.
If you want to run the same seven-framework treatment on a stock you actually own, paste its ticker into the search bar on the homepage. The free tier gives three full verdicts a week. The 47-stock all-seven-frameworks cohort that AAPL sits inside is browsable at /blog/12500-stocks-7-frameworks-cross-framework-consensus/. For the same treatment on other mega-caps, see our deep dives on NVIDIA (NVDA), Microsoft (MSFT) and Tesla (TSLA).