The staff of Fortune recently assembled its predictions for 2016. Here’s one of their forecasts.
Apple just announced record earnings for fiscal 2015, posting nearly one-quarter of a trillion dollars in revenue, and it remains the most valuable public company by far. Apple briefly held the title of the world’s first $700 billion company in the first half of 2015, and Wall Street analysts believe it’ll shatter that mark next year: Their average 12-month price target of $149 would give Apple a market capitalization of $831 billion. To get there, Apple shares would have to rise 22%. But considering its track record, it seems realistic to expect that Apple will justify that kind of bump, by continuing to gain smartphone market share and achieve strong growth in emerging economies.
This article is part of the “2016 Fortune Crystal Ball”, a package of 33 predictions about business, politics and the economy by the writers and editors of Fortune.
See the entire package here.
MacDailyNews Take: Merely a marker to $1 trillion and beyond!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “David E.” for the heads up.]
Well, obviously… Apple has to hit $800B before hitting $1T. 🙂
As long as Tim Cook is running the company Apple will likely continue to lose value. It appears Wall Street is Tim Cook’s greatest nemesis. Those big investors on Wall Street treat Tim Cook like a fool. They were constantly nagging at Tim to make huge buybacks. $140 billion is no small amount but what has it done for for Apple except increase debt. Apple has become the laughingstock of Wall Street with Tim Cook as the Court Jester.
On a day when the market is up in triple digits, the so-called cheap stock of Apple is comfortably lying in the red. Honestly, what investor is stupid enough to buy into Apple when every day there’s some channel check report saying Apple’s iPhone business has collapsed with no hope of revival. You don’t even see those kind of reports for Microsoft’s Windows Phone business. Tim Cook has politely allowed loyal Apple shareholders to become the biggest fools in tech. Apple had some fairly decent quarters in 2015 and yet the stock died. However, 2016 is only predicted to be a lot worse. I’m a loyal shareholder but I’m not blind to what is happening. The news media goes out of its way to slam Apple at every opportunity. An awful lot of people have an axe to grind with Apple and Apple is losing all credibility.
Earlier in the year Apple’s market cap was almost double Alphabet’s market cap but look at it now with Alphabet’s P/E of nearly 3X Apple’s P/E. Microsoft’s P/E is even higher than Alphabet’s P/E. Seriously, Apple SNAFU’ed.
Based on Bloomberg market cap numbers as of today:
AAPL 616.0 B; GOOG 517.0 B; MSFT 440.9 B. Contrast to what they were when AAPL joined the DJIA Mar.19: AAPL 742.6 B; GOOG 381.7 B; MSFT 346.9 B.
Obviously, there is anti-Apple on WS, perhaps WS wants its people to run Apple, that’s why AAPL stagnates regardless how much profits Apple has been made.
$800,000,000,000 – $1,000,000,000,000: to me, a non-investor, these are meaningless metrics, mere bragging rights! Would they were a totally private corporation, that would be a headline worthy of framing.
The most important, the only consideration, really, is does Apple continue to make insanely great products?