“Canaccord Genuity’s T. Michael Walkley reiterated his Buy rating on the stock and upped his target price to $600 (from $570),” Tiernan Ray reports for Barron’s, “noting that he expects its devices to take market share in the second half of his year, as he sees a lack of differentiation among Android competitors and new iPhones and iPads with larger screens will encourage the company’s customer base to upgrade.”
Ray reports, “[Walkley wrote], ‘In fact, our February wireless store surveys indicated the iPhone 5s was still the most aspirational smartphone and the top selling device in the U.S. and in many international markets despite seasonally slower sales trends. Given these trends, we increase our F’14/F’15 iPhone and iPad unit estimates.'”
Full article here.
Apple has as much chance of hitting $600 as there is the chance of Steve Jobs coming back from the dead.
The stock is dead in the water. It’s no longer a growth story, more like how much can Wall Street make Tim Cook dance to their tune. Stock buybacks, dividend payouts, appearance before the Senate Committee, sitting beside Michelle Obama during the inauguration, all are wasted efforts if the leader of the company is a visionless robot.
There’ll be a new song in the iTunes Store soon, called The Tim Cook Wall St. Two Step Waltz.
Why bother?
Why? — Because Apple continues to vacuum the lion’s share share of mobile device profits from the entire industry, due to the shrewd decisions of Tim Cook. During and after Steve Jobs.
If mounting pressure to remove him were to succeed, the number two vendor Samsung could capture more of those profits. That’s assuming, of course, that Apple is just another company and that Tim Cook is an uncommon operations genius — remove him and it levels the playing field for the competition. And since Samsung plays dirty, they would soon own that playing field.
Problem: it all rests on an assumption that Apple is ordinary and Cook is dangerously competent, like Jobs. It fails if the reality is that Apple itself is unique, an artistic creation in its own right possessing great intrinsic power, independent of its temporal CEO.
If the former assumption is correct, then doling out payments in a Nixonian scheme to discredit Apple can contribute to derailing it. If it’s the latter, then Samsung wasted time and money attacking one man when they had more profitably studied how Apple actually does business, and copied that.
Apple better step it up for the 6!
upped his target price to $600 (from $570)
Well, DUH. Safety first, eh?
Braver target please!