Merrill Lynch initiates coverage of Apple with ‘sell’ rating

Apple Computer (AAPL) shares fell 13 cents to $14.77 in after-hours trading Monday following Merrill Lynch reinitiating its coverage on the personal-computer maker with a “sell” rating. Merrill analyst Steve Milunovich said Apple appears to be dealing with a thin pipeline for new products and he expects the company to continue to lose market share. Milunovich also estimates that Apple’s December quarter sales should be $1.45 billion, or about $50 million below the consensus estimate of analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call. Interesting timing with Steve Jobs’ MacWorld Keynote today, eh?

2 Comments

  1. Merrill is hardly a credible authority on much of anything anymore. CNet, which broke the story on the Internet, should get a thorough tongue lashing for NOT qualifying their source, which has about as much integrity as Arthur Anderson.

    The Register does a very good job of putting them in their place:

    “Merrill paid $100 million in fines for hyping stocks it privately regarded – as “dog” and “piece of shit”, and the analysts continue to beat up on successful R&D spenders like EMC and Sun Microsystems, who like Apple, all seem to be weathering the recession very well. (We discussed some of the analysts flawed logic here, and here. Eliot Spitzer’s pursuit of the Wall Street swindlers has generated much interesting reader debate here, here and here).

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/39/28765.html

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