“While many investors may now think Apple Inc. is rotten to the core, Wall Street is trying to rally support for the once high-flying stock,” Rex Crum reports for MarketWatch.
MacDailyNews Take: Replace “many” with “idiotic” in the sentence above.
Crum continues, “Such was apparent Wednesday, as most of the analysts covering Apple (AAPL) renewed their buy calls on the stock, which has now shed more than a third of its value since Christmas and is trading well below the Street’s lowest price targets.”
“Richard Gardner of Citigroup said that ‘this dramatic decline fully discounts a recession and we would be buyers on weakness’ in a note Wednesday,” Crum reports.
“More than 80% of the analysts covering the stock rate the shares as a buy, according to data from Thomson Financial,” Crum reports.
“However, some are resetting their expectations for the shares. Several analysts trimmed their price targets, lowering the Street median target price from $215 to $210. Current targets range from a low of $150 to a high of $250, according to Thomson data,” Crum reports.
“At its current share price, Apple trades about 25 to 26 times estimated earnings for the next four quarters… about 35% below its average P/E ratio of 40.5 over the last five years, according to Thomson data,” Crum reports.
“Bear Stearns analyst Andrew Neff said that the breadth of Apple’s current and anticipated product offerings puts the company in a better position this year than in 2007,” Crum reports. “Neff has an outperform rating on Apple’s stock; he trimmed his price target on the shares to $220 a share from $233 and called the day’s weakness a opportunity for investors. ‘Apple is on the cusp of multiple product cycles,’ Neff commented. ‘We’re actually more comfortable on Apple’s drivers due to iPhone shipping, accelerating Mac momentum and digital video, where video rentals [are] just starting.'”
Full article here.