3 Reasons Why This Beaten-Down Growth Stock Could Trounce the S&P 500 in the Second Half of 2025

• Apple's latest offerings and announcements aren't generating excitement among investors.

• The company could accelerate earnings during an upgrade cycle.

• Apple is a fair value for an industry-leading company.

• 10 stocks we like better than Apple ›

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) is in the bottom 10% of S&P 500 stocks when measuring year-to-date performance. The stock trades down almost 22% at the time of this writing.

Here are three reasons why the sell-off in Apple has gone far enough, and why the beaten-down growth stock could be a great buy for the second half of 2025.

Apple generally puts out two major product and service announcements each year. The first, known as the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), just concluded. The second is its new products unveiling, which typically happens in September.

WWDC 2025 was a bit of a mixed bag, as Apple failed to make a splash with its artificial intelligence (AI)-related announcements. But there were announcements about upgrades.

At WWDC 2024, Apple unveiled Apple Intelligence. At WWDC 2025, it announced new features across Apple products, allowing developers to access the company's on-device large language model (LLM). It also allows users to take what they see on their screen and leverage that visual across different applications. For example, users can engage with ChatGPT, Alphabet's Google, or shop on Etsy based on what they are viewing at a given moment. Apple Intelligence can also help translate languages through Messages, FaceTime, and on phone calls. And it can take a visual for an event and add it to the user's calendar, saving a manual entry step.

Apple also unveiled a software interface update called Liquid Glass and a new operating system for many of its products called iOS 26. The software is a major design update that will impact content across all of Apple's apps and devices.

Following the announcements, Apple's stock price ticked down slightly, possibly because the announcements were underwhelming compared to what competitors are doing or because folks were simply expecting more. As of Friday afternoon, Apple was down 3.8% compared to its closing price on June 6 before WWDC began.

There is no shortage of criticism that Apple is behind on AI and simply isn't innovating enough. But Apple is in a different position than other companies because it is mainly consumer-facing. Apple makes sophisticated and elegantly designed products that pair with a suite of services -- including Apple TV, Apple Music, Apple Pay, Apple Card, iCloud, and more. Apple wants to avoid releasing software updates that overwhelm factions of its user base, making AI updates that are difficult to navigate, or releasing a design feature that isn't received well.