“Investment firm Needham on Tuesday broke its typical semi-annual schedule and updated its price target for Apple stock to $97, citing stronger than expected iPhone sales and also the surprise announcement of a new programming language called Swift,” Neil Hughes reports for AppleInsider.
“For the last five years, analyst Charlie Wolf has revised his Apple price target twice per year, in February and August, after the company would report its first- and third-fiscal-quarter results. In February, Wolf had a pre-split price target of $590 — a number that Apple quickly exceeded thanks in large part to blockbuster iPhone sales that surpassed market expectations,” Hughes reports. “After the 7-for-1 split, Wolf’s target was at $86.32, still well below Apple’s trading price. Given that his projection looked on track to remain underwater until his next scheduled update in August, Wolf opted on Tuesday to break out of his pattern and revise his target higher to $97.”
“Another reason for Wolf’s increase was the introduction of the new Swift programming language at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month. The analyst said on Tuesday that he believes Swift was the most significant announcement from this year’s WWDC,” Hughes reports. “‘If software does indeed drive hardware choices, we believe Apple has leapt ahead of the tools available on the Android platform,’ Wolf wrote. ‘This in turn should translate into an increasing percentage of high-end Android users switching to the iPhone when they upgrade.'”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]