“Wall Street has become increasingly bearish on Apple this year, a view represented by a beleaguered stock price and downgrades, but on Thursday, one firm bucked the pessimistic trend and upgraded the name to ‘buy,’ with a $540 price target,” Paul Toscano reports for CNBC.
“Walter Piecyk, the analyst at BTIG responsible for the upgrade, spoke with CNBC’s ‘Squawk on the Street’ to discuss his view on why the stock has upside in the medium term. ‘The buy side wants to look towards 2014 where there could be earnings growth,’ he said,” Toscano reports. “‘The Street went from basically thinking that (CEO) Tim Cook has to provide some revolutionary product to now assuming that he won’t even do obvious things to generate revenue,’ Piecyk said. ‘There’s clearly a revenue opportunity with a low-priced phone. I think it’s logical that they will or they’ll find other revenue opportunities in 2014. Frankly, if they don’t, you’re probably looking at another management team.'”
Toscano reports, “‘The market opportunity for Apple — that they don’t address right now — is the 70 percent of the global subscriber base that is pre-paid. They want an iPhone,’ he said, citing mobile phone re-seller Gazelle, which that said there is an ‘insatiable’ demand for cheaper iPhones in emerging markets. ‘If Apple can address that market, that is incremental revenue and profit opportunity,’ he added.”
Read more, and see the video, in the full article here.
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Bear no more: BTIG upgrades Apple to ‘buy,’ with $540 price target – March 14, 2013