“Nomura’s Jeffrey Kvaal today reiterates a Buy rating on shares of Apple [and ups his AAPL price target] to $185 from $175, after bumping up his P/E multiple on the stock, arguing that the impending debut of the next iPhone means the company can sell a lot more units than expected, assuming the device is ‘cool enough’ to sell at prices of $1,000 or more,” Tiernan Ray reports for Barron’s.
“Kvaal’s own estimate for how many iPhones Apple may sell in its fiscal year that starts next month is 268 million units, which is above the consensus for 247 million, he writes,” Ray reports. “Among the factors playing to Apple’s favor as its ‘installed base’ of users of the iPhone will be 60% higher at the end of this month than it was three years ago when the iPhone 6 came out.”
We believe the iPhone user base will end FY17 with ~663mn subscribers. This estimate is ~65% above our estimate of the iPhone user base entering the iPhone 6 cycle which was ~400mn. We consider these approximate figures, as Apple does not disclose them. Apple does, however, offer clues with occasional comments about iOS user base growth or switchers coming from Android. Apple noted earlier this year that its iOS user base was growing in the “strong double digits”, which we equate to 15-20%. iPhone units are, of course, a clue in and of themselves. We corroborate our assumptions with iOS App Store download data from SensorTower. We interpret the slightly up (+4% y/y) number of unique iOS App Store downloads as a signal that Apple’s user base continues to grow at a constant 10-15%, if not higher. SensorTower counts only downloads from new users; downloaders from existing users upon purchase of a new phone do not count. Thus, a steady download figure means a steady rate of new users entering the iOS platform. — Nomura analyst Jeffrey Kvaal, September 6, 2017
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s all going to be contingent on whether Apple can get enough assembled to achieve supply/demand balance. We expect the OLED iPhone supply to be severely constrained for many months.