“Another day, another Apple price target increase,” Tiernan Ray reports for Barron’s.
“The stock is up 2 cents at $128.48 after Goldman Sachs’s Bill Shope writes that he has greater confidence since his last ‘scenario analysis’ of the company, back in December, and raised his price target to $145 from $130, while reiterating a Buy rating,” Ray reports. “Specifically, ‘Tim Cook’s presentation at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference has increased our confidence in Apple’s platform momentum (particularly on Apple Pay), the potential for the Apple Watch, and the prospects for sustained iPhone growth,’ writes Shope.”
“Stepping through various factors at play for Apple, Shope writes that his original belief that there was little risk of ‘sharper than normal’ drop in iPhone sales in the March quarter, after the big December quarter, is not only still intact, but Apple’s forecast for the quarter ‘appears to be remarkably conservative,'” Ray reports. “Shope’s ‘base case’ for Apple for calendar 2015 is for $231 billion in revenue, a gross profit margin of 39.5%, free cash flow of $63 billion, and EPS of $9.03. That assumes sales of b, 13.5 million Apple Watchs, 21 million Macs and 63.4 million iPads.”
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