“Apple’s (AAPL) blowout performance earned a new round of raised stock appraisals from Wall Street Wednesday,” Scott Moritz reports for The Street. “Shrugging off the potentially permanent departure of CEO Steve Jobs Monday, most analysts focused instead on the rapidly expanding Mac, iPhone and iPad sales and pronounced Apple an ‘unrivaled growth story.'”
• JPMorgan’s Mark Moskowitz bumped up his 2011 AAPL price target to $450 from $420
• UBS’s Maynard Um raised his AAPL price target to $465 from $415
• RBC’s Mike Abramsky boosted his AAPL stock price target to $425 from $395
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “JES42” for the heads up.]
Good Morning America!!!
Some more upgrades
1. Goldman Sachs price target to $450 from $430; rating Buy
2. Bofa Merrile price target to $450 from $425; rating Buy
3. Oppenheimer target to $425 from $395; rating Outperform
4. Susquehanna target to $445 from $390; rating Positive
5. Gleacher & Co. target to $400 from $355; rating Buy
6. Ticonderoca Securities target to $550 from 450; rating Buy <<< $550!!
7. Stifel target to $420 from $400
11. Wedbush target $430 from $405; rating Outperform
They are just making up numbers
Apple’s forward P/E is currently 14.8
That is rediculously low. Apple’s P/E has been running 20-30. Just to get it’s P/E back to 20 would require either
1) Cut sales (unlikely especially with CDMA iPhone for Verizon and probably China Mobile as well as new iPad)
2) Stock price to go up to $500
Same thing happened last year when Apple’s forward P/E dropped below 20.
If this isn’t manipulation!… wonder how i could name it?
Whats P/E? And is it not good if its low?
In the horizon you see a “TRILLION” company coming!!!
AAPL started the day at its 52-week HIGH. So much for “Stellar Apple financial results likely to be overshadowed by CEO health concerns.”
How bold! Ask them about an everyday nothing special $35 stock and they have no problem stating it will go to $50 or $75. But, if it is Apple, they can’t see it is the same $350 going to $500 or $750.
BIG NUMBERS SCARE THESE CLUELESS IDIOTS!
Less than a year ago Apple was at $192 and today it is $348. THAT IS A 81% JUMP IN UNDER A YEAR!!! Wouldn’t that be about $630 next January in 2012? So bold. So bold!
Renderlab, P/E is a stock’s Price divided by it’s Earnings. Lower and the stock is cheep or undervalued. Higher and it is considered expensive. Apple’s is 15.15 and thought of as cheep or average. Yet, it is the best company on the stock market.
You can see several at http://finance.yahoo.com/q/co?s=AAPL+Competitors
A definition of the P/E can be seen at:
http://www.investorwords.com/3656/P_E_ratio.html
Let’s take a good look at Apple shares. On Friday Apple shares were sitting at about $348. On Monday with the announcement of Steve Jobs Deathwatch 3, shares plummeted into the crapper. Now on Wednesday after extremely mega-huge blowout earnings, the stock sits at a lofty… $345. $345????!!! That looks like a loss of $3 despite mega-huge blowout earnings and multiple analysts upgraded target prices well above $400.
Not quite the look of a trillion dollar market cap company. Looks more like a company who’s share price rides on the health of its CEO who is soon to be defunct. That’s why Wall Street doesn’t see any reason to award Apple a higher share price no matter how many iDevices they sell. Simple enough.
“But, but … to be a successful business, Apple needs to license the OS!
Apple needs to cut its prices!
Apple needs to produce a NetBook!
Apple needs to reduce their margins!
Apple needs include a physical keyboard with the software keyboard!
Apple needs to be less secretive!
Apple needs to give everyone, everything they think they want, and not introduce new technology that people don’t yet know they want!”
But instead, Apple is rewriting the business text books.
This is good for the consumers.
@RnederLab
P/E is stock price / earnings per share. For Apple the P/E is currently 19. Typically stock brokers will tolerate higher P/E if they think the stock has good growth potential.
Before the dotcom bubble burst many tech stocks had P/E of 30 and above. Now most are in the 10s. Microsoft is 12.
Forward P/E is where the market will guess what the earnings will be in the near future. You could argue that Apple will produce an EPS for this fiscal year of ~$25. If the P/E remains at 19 that will mean the stock can go up to close to $500 per share.
Given Apple huge current success and obvious near term success the P/E could go up even higher say 25. So it is entirely feasible that the market could bear having the stock rise to over $600 without taking significant risks.
Apple is on a roll and have been for years now. Their current products are kicking ass and their future ones are going to be hard to beat.
In my mind this parallels Dells success in the 90s but with more breadth and depth in products and services. It will be interesting if the market really takes to Apple. They do so begrudgingly and mostly to make money by manipulating the stock.
My only word of caution is that companies like MS make more profit as a percentage of revenue than Apple. Apple will finally beat MS in profit this quarter but needed to create more revenue to do so. I have no worries about that because they have so much cash on hand but the market may see that as a negative.
@Ballmer
The mere fact that the stock didn’t drop by more that 10% means that the confidence in the management is very high.
The analysts have just upped the target prices to an average of 450. Therefore the stock now has a $100 to rise this year.
I wonder what the target price for MS, Dell and HP are?
Instead of obsessing on Apple’s P/E when questioning the value of Apple’s stock, here is something else to consider;
If the bloggers and financial commentators are correct, and Apple only has 10% penetration of the market, then this means that Apple has potential for growing 10 times at the current market size.
That’s a minimum, since the market is always growing. And this refers only to north America.
If you want to see future growth, watch AAPL.
@almux
What are you talking about? What about analysts raising price estimates in any way constitutes manipulation?
I’m reading a lot of Apple stock should be raised stories, yet today it is below its all time high and only up 2.83 a share. If all of these stock people want it to go up to 450 or higher I think they need to put there money where there mouths are and just do it! After SMASHING the quarter way above what these analysts expected with an all time high I would have expected the stock way above 350 a share today. Yet as always, nothing comes of all this talk.
@b9bot
I think the pricing was influenced by both Steve’s leave of absence and the general downward movement of the market. Apple is a volatile stock it often moves sharply.
Those who know are buying or planning to buy. Some will watch and pontificate and others will make money.