Former Apple chief executive Tim Cook has sold about 192,000 Apple shares worth roughly $63.9 million, according to regulatory filings, weeks after handing the top job to John Ternus and moving to executive chairman. The sale was made under a pre-arranged trading plan adopted in May.
Filings dated 6 October showed Cook sold 191,753 shares on 2 October at prices between $330.66 and $334.50. A day earlier, more than 374,000 performance-based restricted stock units had vested, their final number set by Apple’s total shareholder return of 90.67% over three years, which ranked in the 76th percentile against S&P 500 peers.
Apple withheld about 199,000 shares, worth roughly $65.75 million, to cover taxes triggered by the vesting. Cook also donated 26,325 shares on the same day, with the recipient not disclosed. After the transactions he still holds more than 3.2 million shares through a trust, keeping his fortune closely tied to the company he led for 15 years.
The mechanics matter for governance watchers. The sale followed a Rule 10b5-1 plan, which lets insiders schedule trades in advance to reduce any suggestion of dealing on private information. For a newly minted executive chairman, the optics of a long-scheduled plan are very different from a discretionary sale.
Cook stepped down on 1 September, just before Ternus unveiled the company’s first foldable iPhone. In his first interview since, Cook said the timing was deliberate — intended to give his successor momentum from a strong product cycle — and insisted he is not meddling in the new chief executive’s decisions.
Investors will now watch how Ternus handles the questions Cook no longer has to answer, from dependence on a rival’s AI technology for Siri to competition from Android foldables that reached market years earlier.
