Bernie Sanders Slams Tim Cook After Apple Raises Prices Despite $112 Billion Profit: 'Unacceptable'

Senator Bernie Sanders has accused Apple chief executive Tim Cook of 'corporate greed' after the company raised prices on a range of Mac and iPad models, despite the technology giant reporting an annual profit of $112 billion (£82.1bn). The Vermont senator branded the increases 'unacceptable'.

Sanders made the comments on his official X account on Friday, a day after Apple pushed through the price rises. The post had been viewed 2.5 million times by Friday afternoon.

'Corporate greed is Tim Cook, the billionaire Apple CEO, claiming that hiking prices on Apple products by over $200 is "unavoidable" after it made $112 billion in profits last year & spent $310 billion on stock buybacks,' Sanders wrote. 'These price hikes aren't unavoidable. They're unacceptable.'

Mac and iPad Prices Rise as Apple Banks Record Profit

The profit figure Sanders cited holds up. Apple's net income for the fiscal year ending 27 September 2025 reached $112B (£82.1B), according to the company's annual report filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. That was up from $93.7B a year earlier and the highest in the company's history. Apple also paid $15.4B (£11.3B) in dividends over the same period.

The price rises that prompted the criticism took effect this week. An earlier report revealed that the MacBook Pro with 1TB of storage rose by $300 to $1,999 (£1,465), the iPad Pro Wi-Fi 256GB climbed $200 to $1,199 (£879), and the entry-level MacBook Neo went up $100 to $699 (£512). Apple left the iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods unchanged.

Investors reacted sharply. Apple shares fell almost 5 per cent after the announcement, trimming close to $200B from its market value, with the stock trading at around $279.81 (£205.20) on Thursday afternoon.

Not everyone read the sell-off the same way. Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, wrote on X that a roughly 5 per cent fall on an average Mac price increase of about 17 per cent looked like an overreaction, arguing that Apple's customer loyalty would blunt the impact on demand.

Sanders' $310 Billion Buyback Claim Doesn't Match the Filing

The second figure in his post is harder to square with Apple's accounts. The same SEC filing states that Apple repurchased $89.3B (£65.5B) of its own shares during the fiscal year, not $310B, a difference of more than $220B.

A community note added to the senator's post flagged the discrepancy and pointed readers to Apple's filing. It had been rated helpful and was showing beneath the post on Friday.

The larger number appears to reflect several years of repurchases combined rather than a single year. Apple has run two overlapping buyback programmes, completing a $110B authorisation announced in May 2024 before launching a fresh $100B programme in May 2025. Neither commits the company to a set amount, and its audited spending for the year was $89.3B.

The correction does not settle the wider dispute. Apple remains one of the most profitable companies in the world, and whether it should raise consumer prices while returning billions to shareholders is a question Sanders has pressed for years.

Apple has tied the increases to the rising cost of memory. Cook told The Wall Street Journal on 17 June that 'price increases are unavoidable,' pointing to surging demand for the memory and storage chips being absorbed by artificial intelligence data centres. He said the company had shielded customers from the higher costs for as long as it could.

Cook is due to step down as chief executive on 1 September after 15 years in charge, leaving the pricing decisions to his successor.