Apple (AAPL) Price Target Raised to $107 at Goldman Due to Enterprise Opportunity

Goldman Sachs maintained a Buy rating on Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and raised its price target to $107.00 (from $103.00). Comments follow news of a deal with IBM (NYSE: IBM). In the view of analyst Bill Shope, it's time to refocus on enterprise opportunity.

"After the close, Apple announced a partnership with IBM to extend its reach into the enterprise BYOD market through IBM’s MobileFirst for iOS solutions. Through the agreement, IBM will offer purpose-built enterprise apps for iOS as well as broader support for device management, security, analytics and mobile integration through its SW and services offerings," noted Shope.

"While Apple’s enterprise opportunity has not been a key focus for investors to date, this should begin to change that. As we noted in our December 2013 report The role of the enterprise in the smartphone wars, business-related smartphones will approach 30% of the market by 2015E, providing significant opportunity for the smartphone platform vendors. The partnership is a clear positive for Apple, validating the unique enterprise capabilities of iOS, which is largely sustained by the lack of iOS fragmentation," he added. "Our target price is based on a P/E multiple of 13X (previously 12.5X), which we raise to account for our improving confidence in Apple’s ability to capitalize on the enterprise opportunity, applied to our CY2015 EPS estimate of $8.23 (unchanged)."

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 $95.32 yesterday.

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