“Steven Chin of UBS today reiterates a Buy rating on shares of materials producer company GT Advanced Technologies (GTAT), and a $22 price target, writing that the company is poised to benefit as a supplier of sapphire material to Apple (AAPL) for use in a future product — though whether an iPhone, or something else, such as a smart watch, he’s not sure,” Tiernan Ray reports for Barron’s.
Our monthly checks found GT had a very successful month of April at its Arizona sapphire fab and estimate it shipped about 1M two-inch equivalents of sapphire to one of Apple’s cover screen suppliers (up 5x from the month of March when it first started production). We are still not sure exactly what Apple product the sapphire is for but if it were all for a smartwatch, it is enough for about 2M/month, if it is all for a 4.7” iPhone 6 it is about 330k/month and if it were all for a 5.5” iPhone 6 it is about 230k/month. If it is possibly all for a larger screen 5.5” iPhone 6 in November, we estimate monthly shipments to this single Apple cover screen supplier need to reach a level of 10M two- inch equivalents per month by September to give us more conviction of a successful ramp to hit the high end of its 2014 sales guidance of $800M… – Steven Chin
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Bill” for the heads up.]
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That must be one hell of an eye he has got there!
Even my eye in liquid form could not see that far into the future!!
My financial advisors, a couple of years ago, at UBS, told me to invest in Microsoft rather than Apple because it was “a better company.”
I thought they were crazy.
My Smith-Barney advisor said the same thing. I have AAPL in my portfolio and I’m very happy with my new financial advisor.
Still do.
If Sapphire made by GTAT goes beyond Apple exclusivity to the Android world and gets up to bouleduction, er, production, then could knock off the top Gorilla. Only a diamond is harder than man made sapphire.