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Piper Jaffray's Munster Lifts Apple (AAPL) Price Target to $120 Ahead of iPhone Event

September 2, 2014 9:38 AM EDT
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Price: $173.79 +0.04%

Rating Summary:
    40 Buy, 24 Hold, 7 Sell

Rating Trend: = Flat

Today's Overall Ratings:
    Up: 9 | Down: 7 | New: 39
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As Streetinsider.com predicted, the Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) price target hike parade has started in earnest. In addition to a price target hike at Nomura, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster - long considered the ax in the stock - boosted his price target from $105 to $120.

The price target hike from Munster comes ahead of upcoming launch of new products and services that will likely give investors optimism that the platform theme is expanding (e.g., iWatch, HomeKit, HealthKit, payments).

"In the near term, we caution that there will likely be noise in the opening weekend iPhone 6 sales numbers given difficult comps from last year's 5C channel fill (details below). While the opening weekend may prove to be a speed bump to shares, we expect additional product launches and the platform theme to move shares higher through year-end," Munster said.

On what to expect at the iPhone event, Munster highlighted:

  • an iPhone 6 to be announced with two new screen sizes
  • given that we believe the new phone will have NFC, we believe there is a 70% chance of an announcement around payments.
  • we give the watch a 50% chance of being announced at the iPhone event. If the watch is not announced at the 9/9 event, it will be announced at an October/November iPad event and be available during the holiday quarter, Munster said.

For an analyst ratings summary and ratings history on Apple click here. For more ratings news on Apple click here.

Shares of Apple closed at $102.50 yesterday.



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Piper Jaffray, Gene Munster, Nomura