Analyst Brian J. White of Ticonderoga Securities “and a handful of other analysts think Apple watchers on Wall Street may be substantially underestimating the potential of the company, which still only has a single-digit market share in mobile phones and personal computers,” Roben Farzad reports for Businessweek. “‘I don’t remember a company of this size growing at this pace,’ says White, who recommends the stock and predicts it could be worth $617 billion within a year — the Street’s highest target. ‘We can’t even model out some of the possibilities: an Apple TV set, huge growth in China, businesses racing to buy Apple laptops. It’s like a religion. It sounds crazy, but it could still be early for Apple.’”

“Wall Street has had trouble getting a read on the prospects of the Cupertino (Calif.) tech wonder for some time. In fairness, Apple’s management is notorious for lowballing financial projections. Even so, Apple’s profit has topped analysts’ average forecasts for 25 straight quarters, according to Bloomberg data,” Farzad reports. “Throughout this period, while Apple shares have soared higher, they’ve become cheaper in relation to earnings. That’s because Apple’s profit, seemingly defying the law of large numbers, keeps growing faster than the share price. Apple hasn’t so much ‘beat the Street’ as humiliated it. ‘There’s simply never been another large company growing at this rate,’ says Eric M. Jackson, managing member of Ironfire Capital, a hedge fund in Naples, Fla., that owns Apple shares. ‘We look at today’s stocks through the lenses and biases of our past.’”

Farzad reports, “If Apple keeps it up, the company will soon have a shot at breaking Microsoft’s record tech company valuation [$607 billion in 1997]. Then, says White, $1 trillion isn’t so absurd. ‘Why not?’ he says. ‘Apple is an industry, not a company.’”

Read more in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Since84" for the heads up.]