Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives says that despite the facts that Apple clearly missed GenAI and is in catch-up mode, is having iPhone sales issues in China, has been hit with a U.S. DOJ antitrust lawsuit, and more negatives causing the company and its stock price to struggle for months, there are plenty of reasons to remain bullish on Apple in the near-term.
Ian Krietzberg
for TheStreet:
His case for a persistently bullish Apple outlook is based on a few factors, one of which is that he believes current full-year iPhone sales estimates are still “hittable.”
Ives also noted Apple’s massive installed base — consisting of 2.2 billion IOS devices — saying that demand around a coming upgrade cycle could “exceed 270 million iPhones” heading into the release of Apple’s newest iPhone.
Ives additionally remains confident that Apple’s June unveiling of its work in artificial intelligence will supercharge the company’s performance.
“While some patience is required to navigate this China weakness, we believe the seeds for an Apple growth turnaround are being planted in the field,” he said.
Ives maintained an “outperform” rating and a $250 price target, which remains the highest Apple price target out there.
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MacDailyNews Take: The average Apple price target is $202, as per TipRanks, but AAPL won’t get there anytime soon without some positive catalyst(s).
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Even $200 is a pipe dream anytime this year. Based on what? A Google partnership, OLED iPads and 0.1″ larger iPhones?
You forgot the possibility of a complete emoji library overhaul and update. It’s one of Tim’s passions…he’ll keep Schiller on it, until complete.
If I was a more naive fellow, I’d say Daniel Ives is naive. But, rather, me thinks that he’s looking to goose the stock price a bit just to see if he can unload some shares.
As for his reasoning – that hasn’t changed in ages: it seems with every update, he gives Apples massive installed base of 2.2b devices as a generic reason for why iPhone sales are set to take off (with never a reason why, this particular year, should be different than the prior one, when there was, say, 2.1b devices!) And whatever Apple will announce at WWDC with respect to AI won’t supercharge much of anything because most consumers are blissfully unaware of what comes out of WWDC and if the only noticeable difference in regular consumers’ lives will be a better Siri, while welcome, won’t cause anyone to run out and buy a new iPhone.