In the burgeoning tablet market, the iPad isn’t nearly as strong as it used to be. Although it’s done well, the Apple Watch hasn’t been that huge success that Apple expected. The iPod? Do people still use those things?
As the maker of the very first, and still most coveted, smartphone in the world however (that would be the iPhone), none of that really matters to Apple. (Well, maybe, but stay with me.)
With better-than-expected performance (yet again), and a huge surge in demand coming out of China, investment research firm UBS recently boosted the estimated fiscal year 2015 earnings for Apple by 1.4% per share, pushing it up to $9.17 a share. The company says that, in the current quarter, 51.1 million units of the ubiquitous iPhone will be sold by Apple, which is 10% more than was expected by industry analysts.
It doesn’t take an industry analyst to tell you that Apple’s shares have been stagnant since the end of April. In fact, even though they beat adjusted earnings estimates by 7%, the company had one of the worst posts-earnings reactions their stock has ever seen, with shares down 5% since Apple’s first quarter results were reported.
With iPhone sales much stronger than expected for this current quarter however, UBS is expecting that revenues and earnings for this quarter will also be better than expected, a spark that Apple could surely use.
As far as their record, UBS has been quite accurate when predicting iPhone’s forecast. While the company won’t change its price target based on these recent change in estimates (they’ll hold at $150) Apple shares have gone from $2.94 to $128.98, a huge overnight increase.
That accounts for over half of Apple’s stock price, not bad for technology that’s going on 8 years old.