In a recent note to investors, analyst Charlie Wolf of Needham & Co. anticipates that Apple’s stock price could very well hit $235 in the next 12 months, in large part due to accelerated iPhone growth.
By exploiting a commanding lead in the all-important smartphone applications market, the iPhone is in a position to chalk up share gains in this fast-growing market that could surprise everyone. In many respects, Apple and Amazon are in similar positions. Amazon holds a relatively small but growing share of the e-commerce market, which itself is small, but growing an order of magnitude faster than the physical retail market.
Just last week, USB analyst Maynard Um wrote that with the iPhone soon to hit the streets of China, Apple would only need to sell a conservative 1 million units in order to boost its EPS by $.04. The iPhone stormed out of the gate when it was first released in the summer of 2007, and hasn’t showed any signs of slowing down anytime soon. Indeed, Apple has consistently taken steps over the past 2 years to enhance the iPhone experience, and further cement its role as the player to beat in the smartphone market – a fact not lost upon Wolf.
Wolf’s bullish position on Apple stems, in part, from Apple’s media event last week when it announced, somewhat unceremoniously, that it was tweaking its genius feature for music to work with apps as well.
Wolf goes on to predict that Apple will sell 107 million iPhones in 2018. Yes, you read that correctly – he’s making a prediction 9 years out! With the tech industry moving at an incredible rate, its hard to predict what’s going to happen 2 years down the line, let alone 9. That said, we’ll take Wolf’s 2018 predictions with a mountainous grain of salt. But as for his $235 price target on Apple’s stock price, we think he’s right on the money, if not a little conservative.
via AppleInsider
September 15th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
“…right on the money, if not a little conservative.” Oh, boy, how sweet that Kool-Aid must taste. Apple will likely sell 8 million iPhones this quarter and the Nano looks to be a holiday hit. Even the iMac sales look to be doing better this year than last year. Still, investors don’t seem to be jumping on board in droves to load up on Apple shares or to at least ride Apple back up to $200. Not even the change in accounting practices are stoking up investors as much as the fanboys who think they’ll wake up one morning and see about $60 added to their share price once the change is made. Apple doesn’t appear to be juiced to any degree since being upgraded by multiple analysts. One thing that’s good is that the shares seem to be less volatile with merely a steady creep upward. Apple will undoubtedly blow away numbers this quarter and hopefully a $10 or so jump will occur. But I’m not expecting any miracles unless China Mobile decides to purchase 10 million iPhones or something like that.
Forget about 2018. Most analysts can’t see one quarter to the next. Munster in 2008 was sure iPhone sales would reach 45 million units in 2009 and possibly a $250 share price for Apple. Not even close.