UBS analyst Timothy Arcuri raised his Apple price target to $275 from $230 on Thursday, representing a huge vote of confidence to the tech giant. However, analysts said that this is yet not enough for the smartphone manufacturer to reach a new record-breaking high.
The new target, as raised by Arcuri, is representative of one of the highest on Wall Street. The raise is motivated by the upward trend on the market performance of the iPhone, which paved the way to Apple’s September-quarter earnings report Tuesday. Analysts said that they are expecting the stocks to rally in a positive momentum even if the Apple shares are off 0.3% in Thursday trading.
“On a relative basis, we acknowledge that things probably won’t get a whole lot better than this and Sept/Oct have typically been the worst time to buy in recent years for relative performance, but as investors roll this sort of multiple forward to include more of the big C20/21 period, we think the stock can still move higher – especially as the ‘tail effect’ from it still being such a big global underweight might last for some time,” he wrote.
Arcuri’s appraisal is highly pushed by what he said is a good performance of the tech giant in China. According to him, for the third quarter alone, third-data points look encouraging in China, and Apple showed a better performance and growth in the region as it did in the previous year.
“More importantly, there has been growth in two of the last three months following declines for two and a half years,” he added. “Build plans for 2019 iPhones have been muted, but recent data suggests a slight uptick given higher demand.”
