Shares of Apple Inc. rallied Friday, as the sharp run-up in prices this year didn’t deter some Wall Street analysts to get even more bullish on the technology giant, citing optimism over the outlook of iPhone sales and the “under-appreciated” opportunity in advertising.
The shares have rocketed 68.5% this year, to make Apple the most valuable U.S. company with a market cap of $1.18 trillion… That stock’s surge hasn’t deterred analyst Dan Ives at Wedbush from saying there’s a lot more room for gains. He reiterated his outperform rating, and raised his stock price target to $325, which is about 22% above current levels, from $300. “While shares are up [more than 65%] year to date, we believe the tech stalwart is still in the midst of a renaissance of iPhone growth heading into 2020 that will further catalyze the stock higher as it gets re-rated from the Street,” Ives wrote in a note to clients.
JPMorgan’s Samik Chatterjee maintained his overweight rating, while bumping up his price target to $290 from $280, saying he’s more bullish because investors have “overlooked” the potential of Apple’s advertising business, as they focused on identifying new avenues of revenue growth for services, such as Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple Pay and Apple Music.
MacDailyNews Take: Even as the world’s most valuable company, Apple has been continually under-appreciated for over a decade.
We’re not sure that most analysts or investors can rally wrap their minds around the vast amounts of money that the machine that Steve Jobs built has generated, is generating, and is capable of generating going forward.
As Jim Cramer has said of AAPL: Own it, don’t trade it. — MacDailyNews, May 3, 2018