| Forbes.com, Fall, 2011. This article was placed on behalf of the U.S. based equity research effort of institutional broker and investment bank Canaccord Genuity. It was part of a series of articles developed under an agreement with forbes.com to work with a variety of contributors and assist them in delivering actionable investment ideas each week. The site, forbes.com is one of the top 500 sites in the world with nearly 10 million subscribers and approximately 100 million page views a month. |
Despite Apple reporting weaker than expected September results, Canaccord technology analyst Michael Walkley reiterated his BUY rating on AAPL and $545 price target on the company. Mr. Walkley said:
“Despite this transitional quarter, we continue to anticipate strong earnings growth for Apple with record holiday sales during the December quarter.”
“While iPhone sales slowed during the September quarter due to the timing of the iPhone 4S launch, we anticipate iPhone sales could rebound to over 27M units during the December quarter. In fact, with over 4M iPhone 4S units sold in the first three days of launch combined with ramping distribution during the December quarter (22 more countries by the end of October), we believe the iPhone will grow faster than the smartphone market during the December quarter.”
He added, “We believe iPhone sales will continue to ramp internationally with China, Russia and Brazil . . . In fact, Asia-Pacific region sales increased by over 100% YoY, and we believe solid sales of the iPhone in this region (especially China) will continue to ramp.”
