“Longtime Apple Inc. bull Piper Jaffray said Tuesday it expects the stock to continue to move higher in what it expects to be a ‘super-long cycle’ versus a ‘supercycle,'” Ciara Linnane reports for MarketWatch.
“Analysts led by Michael Olson said a survey of 400 iPhone buyers has bolstered their expectations for the mix of iPhones to be sold in fiscal 2018,” Linnane reports. “‘Specifically, we are modeling iPhone X to account for 38% of iPhones sold this year, essentially in-line with our survey at 35% of buyers intending to buy iPhone X,’ they wrote. ‘Our estimated mix of iPhone 8 in fiscal 2018 is 40% and our survey was exactly in-line at 40%.'”
“The survey supports Olson’s estimates for an average selling price of $720, revenue of $270.6 billion and per-share earnings of $11.17,” Linnane reports. “The current FactSet consensus is for fiscal 2018 revenue of $273.9 billion and EPS of $11.43.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Better sustained excellence than shorter bursts and lulls.
Apple’s results for the 2017 holiday quarter are going to leave the maws of the hoi polloi agape!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
While I welcome the prospect that 38% of customers might buy the $1,000 iPhone X, I also note that this figure is derived from a survey of just 400 buyers and therefore the findings from that survey should be treated with a sizeable pinch of salt.
Ehhhhhhh, friggin’ hoi polloi. What do they know anyway? Go Apple!
Why is there such a large discrepancy concerning iPhone sales from analyst to analyst? It’s seems rather obvious that investors are choosing to believe that iPhone sales will be lower than expected or Apple’s share price wouldn’t have taken such a hit as it did. It appears as though investors choose to believe in rumors about substantial cuts in the component supply chain rather than any super-long supercycle.
There are always cuts in the supply chain at this time of year because the factories in China shut down over the Chinese New Year.
Apple obviously plans for this to happen and reduces component orders ahead of time, but it’s always twisted to look as though Apple is having to cut production due to falling demand.
You’ll see exactly the same story next year too, just as we have seen every year since iPhones became so successful.
Barclays did similar research last year and discovered that something like 65% of new smartphone buyers wanted an iPhone, and of those, 56% of current android phone owners wanted to switch to iPhone. Of iPhone buyers I think they reported that in their survey of 1000+ people, 35% intended to buy an iPhone X.
So this seems consistent with previous surveys and buying intentions, but isn’t reflected in the stock yet, where analysts are broadly assuming a mix only including 17-20% iPhone X out of total iPhones sold.