Analysts at Piper Sandler and Oppenheimer on Tuesday lowered their expectations for Apple’s sales in the first half of 2020 due to widespread disruptions from the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, including weakening consumer demand. Apple has closed all retail stores outside Greater China until further notice after earlier closing those stores in Greater China earlier this year.
Patrick Seitz for Investor’s Business Daily:
“Given the global uncertainty, we are reducing our estimates to account for the impact of the coronavirus on the company’s product revenue,” Piper Sandler analyst Harsh Kumar said in a note to clients. “While we lowered our estimates following the company’s announcement in mid-February, we feel demand softness has moved from China to the United States and Western Europe.”
Kumar is positive on Apple stock longer term because of the coming 5G iPhone upgrade cycle.
Oppenheimer analyst Andrew Uerkwitz cut his estimates for Apple sales for the March and June quarters. He cited multiple weeks of retail shutdowns and home quarantines.
“We continue to believe that Apple, with its strong brand, supply chain expertise, and ‘essential’ status for users, will recover more quickly than peers,” Uerkwitz said in a note to clients.
MacDailyNews Take: Analysts lowering Apple estimates is obviously a necessity due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Target prices have been cut because everyone is buying the Samsung Galaxy S20… NOT!
Of course target prices were going to be cut with all this CoViD-19 crap going around. The only thing that annoys me is Apple’s target price is being cut more than any other major tech company and although I understand the reason, I still don’t like it. Apple has everything negative going against it. Stopped/slowed production, consumers all over the world losing jobs, Apple retail stores closing, etc. What more could possibly have gone wrong for Apple? The only positive thing Apple has going for itself is a mountain of reserve cash to weather the storm. Will Apple actually recover faster than its peers? That remains to be seen. I think there will be a lot of consumers with empty pockets who won’t be buying any expensive new Apple products. I think those consumers will be looking for low-cost computer products if anything.