RBC ups Apple stock price target to $525 due to 'iPhone frenzy'
Analyst Mike Abramsky raised the firm's target on Wednesday In a note to investors entitled "iPhone Frenzy: Expecting Strong Q1 Results." The firm expects Apple to announce $40.2 billion in revenue and $11.00 earnings per share, up from prior projections of $38.6 billion and $10.00 EPS, next Tuesday.
RBC believes Wall Street will react favorably to the results because analysts' expectations were reset after transitions with Apple's iPhone product line during the September 2011 quarter resulted in a miss.
Abramsky believes Apple will report fiscal second quarter guidance of $32 billion in revenue and $8.00 EPS. Given that his estimates are slightly above Street guidance of $31.8 billion and $7.94 EPS, the analyst believes Apple's guidance will be "healthy." He also pointed out that fiscal second quarter guidance may include more global iPhone rollouts and the expected March launch of the third-generation iPad.
Global checks indicated "unprecedented iPhone sell-through," Abramsky said, noting stock outs in multiple regions. He estimates 32 million iPhones shipped in the December quarter, with 14.2 million coming from the U.S. A recent survey of analysts revealed that professionals expect 29.74 million units on average, while independent estimates were 33.4 million iPhones on average.
RBC expects Apple to report sales of 13 million iPads during the holiday quarter and 5.1 million Macs. The Street consensus for the iPad stands at 13.5 million units, according to one poll.
Apple reassured investors during its last quarterly earnings conference call that its fiscal first quarter would be a record-setting one. The company is guiding for unprecedented revenue of $37 billion during the period. The iPhone maker also said it is confident that it will break its all-time high for quarterly handset sales on the strength of the iPhone 4S launch.
30 Comments
Apple will have to throw in the towel and guide modest Q2 and Q3 due to lack of a competitive iPhone model. Europe has already lost interest despite Cook's promises last summer to address the market.
LTE/4"+ device better be released this year or the US/Asia will follow.
If it goes to $525, I'll be selling out
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Breakdancing all the way to the bank haha!
Apple will have to throw in the towel and guide modest Q2 and Q3 due to lack of a competitive iPhone model. Europe has already lost interest despite Cook's promises last summer to address the market.
LTE/4"+ device better be released this year or the US/Asia will follow.
You know that less then 4% of phone purchases are LTE?
The far majority are not tech nerds. LTE brings zero advantage to 99.99% of the users. Downloading blurays to your Iphone seems just stupid. Using you 1 gig datacap in minutes have to one of the more insane things to do?
3G: 21 megabit
LTE: 50 megabit
With data caps: WHO CARES?
Todays LTE stuff have a battery penalty of 50% that is why Apple have to wait for 28nm LTE. Apple is hugely motivated to move to LTE simply because Apple pays Nokia over 1 dollar per 3G device in licensing fee's. Going to pure LTE would eliminate that fee.
BTW. I hate tech nerds who only look at numbers. That does not drive the user experience. Especially since most tech nerds don't have a clue and believe that 1.2ghz always is better the 1ghz, that 12 megapixels always are better then 8 megapixels. This is PC thinking and disregards design and optimization.
When you buy a car: sure performance is a small part of why you buy a specific car, but nobody is so insane that they buy a Skoda with 120HP instead of a BMW with 110HP. Its about design, how useful its for the consumer, how much fuel it draws, safety and so on. This is what computer industry will be like because its mass market, not nerd market.
Nerd market is for Android.
Apple will have to throw in the towel and guide modest Q2 and Q3 due to lack of a competitive iPhone model. Europe has already lost interest despite Cook's promises last summer to address the market.
LTE/4"+ device better be released this year or the US/Asia will follow.
You're really just talking about yourself here. Don't speak on behalf of a whole continent.
I know that around here, we can't even use the 3G features on phones, so 4G is just a dream. As for the rest of the country, I hear similar stores. So while some folks can use 3 and 4G, I'm not sure if the masses can, or if it matters to them.
It's very nice or at least cool, to have the latest and greatest of anything, but why pay for something you can't use?
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