If you hadn’t noticed, Apple’s stock has made a nice comeback recently. As of this article, it’s trading at around $628, a nice 42% bump over the same time last year. Why is Apple’s stock performing so well, when the Dow is up around 20%, and the NASDAQ is up less than 10% over the same period?
Business Insider says, “It’s all about the iPhone.”
Yesterday, Brian Blair at Rosenblatt Securities said, “The supply chain is buzzing primarily about iPhone units for the back half of the year, which we believe are stronger than expected at north of 100 million units” for the second half of the year.
Blair, who visited Taiwan last week to meet with Apple’s manufacturing sources, came away bullish on how Apple will perform in the second half of the year. (Yes, the first half of the year is almost gone…)
Blair is in the camp of those who believe Apple will introduce a redesigned 4.7-inch iPhone and a 5.5-inch iPhone later this year. He’s seeing a bigger demand this year, due to how people hold off on buying an off-year “S” model of the iPhone. He expects this year’s non-S “iPhone 6” to fuel demand amongst those hold-outs.
Blair also expects Apple to release their much-rumored “iWatch” by the end of the year. He sees that piece of wearable tech selling anywhere from 18 to 21 million units. (That is known as a SWAG – A “Scientific Wild-Assed Guess.” – Ed.)
Blair isn’t alone in his belief that this will be a great year for Apple. Many analysts see great things happening for Apple, with next weeks WWDC acting as the kick-off. Apple is expected to introduce iOS 8, and a new version of OS X at the event, along with some health-related apps, and a rumored new home-automation platform.
Blair and others are bullish on Apple because the company seems to have new products in the pipeline, and they’re expecting good sales numbers for the new iPhone in the fall.
Not mentioned by Blair is the 7-for-1 stock split that occurs next week. Which would definitely have an effect on the increase.
However, it adds up that expectations = “BOOM!” for AAPL stock.
