Apple’s big price hike seen as "an unprecedented push to protect margins"

Investing.com -- Apple's decision to raise Mac, iPad and accessories prices by 15% to 25% represents an unprecedented effort to defend gross margins amid record memory cost inflation, Morgan Stanley told investors in a note on Friday, adding that demand resilience and ecosystem lock-in could still drive revenue and earnings upside.

Analyst Erik Woodring said the scale of the increases suggests Apple is "defending gross margins, not just offsetting cost inflation, particularly from memory."

The bank noted it could not find comparable price hikes of this magnitude going back 15 years, outside of isolated model-level changes.

Woodring explained that Morgan Stanley's prior assumptions of 5% to 10% like-for-like increases for non-iPhone products "likely understated pricing, creating potential upside to revenue and EPS estimates."

An Apple spokesperson said the company has "shielded our customers from these increases so far, but we have now reached a point where we need to begin raising prices on a number of products."

Morgan Stanley believes demand elasticity is the key debate, but noted that "history suggests Apple's ecosystem supports relatively resilient pricing power and some level of demand inelasticity," pointing to a $200 to $300 price increase netting out to just $4 to $6 per month over a four-year replacement cycle.

On iPhone 18, Morgan Stanley continues to model $100 like-for-like starting price increases, though it flagged uncertainty around Apple's margin strategy for its most important product.

The bank added that industry checks have shown no reduction in iPhone build plans, suggesting Apple may opt for more modest increases on its flagship device.

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