“Forget all the doom predictions about Apple — according to Drexel Hamilton analyst Brian White, the company may have just had its best January since 2008,” Luke Dormehl reports for Cult of Mac.
“Although Apple itself has said that iPhone sales are likely to fall for the first time ever in the January quarter, White claims that his own analysis of Apple’s suppliers suggests that things are looking far from bleak,” Dormehl reports.
All of the companies in our Apple Monitor (i.e., basket of Apple suppliers in Taiwan) have reported January sales and the performance was much better than typical seasonality. After the weakest December on record for our Apple Monitor, this was the best January since 2008. Given the significant underperformance for our Apple Monitor in November and December, we are pleased to see this strong outperformance in January. — Drexel Hamilton analyst Brian White
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Just as supplier checks are poor indicators of “bad” performance, so they are of “good” performance. There a re too many other factors to consider. We’ll see when Apple posts results in April.
Anecdotally, this jibes with the large number of new iPhones 6S I’ve had to set up this January, as many clients suddenly replaced their phones – after the holiday season. I’ve also noticed friends and family are sporting new 6S phones they picked up in Jan/Feb. Something seems to be brewing.
I wouldn’t get excited over anything Brian White has to say about Apple. He has a target price of $200 on Apple while Apple remains valued at well under $100. It’s likely to be another exciting year for F.A.N.G. shareholders and another snoozer for Apple shareholders. Apple is again taking on more debt for buybacks and Wall Street seems to hate that when Apple does it. If Amazon does it, then that’s great. If Apple does it then it’s a disaster. Whatever iPhone sales Apple has big investors will consider it a huge disappointment, so I’m staying wary of any purported “good” indications.
Cannot be true …because Katy Huberty and her WS analyst pals said so !
White’s data, while by no means highly reliable, is better than the usual supply chain rumors and vague information put out by asian publications and analysts. That’s because it’s based on published numbers from real companies that do a substantial amount of business with Apple. So I think it deserves a little more respect than the usual supply chain bilge to which we are subjected.
The spring is coiled.
Get ready for it to LEAP forward.
All planned for.
Buy AAPL cheap while you can.