By Sam Boughedda
Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) price target was raised to $185 from $177 per share by a KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst on Friday.
The analyst told investors in a research note that they recommend owning Apple shares and are raising the price target on the stock based on strong trends.
"Our KFLD shows Indexed Spending was +29% m/m in July, vs. the 3-year avg. of +16%. Our data rapidly rebounded post softer results in April through June. July is seasonally the strongest sequential growth month of F4Q, which appears to be off to a strong start, when we would expect Spend to moderate in August and September," the analyst said. "Currently, the data supports our above-consensus Hardware revenue estimates, which we increase for iPhone (F4Q22: KBCM $69.6B vs. consensus $68.0B) based on further review of our estimates and F3Q22 results"
The analyst added that the data says they should expect better than historical growth for Hardware in the upcoming quarter.
"We are tweaking our revenue estimates for F4Q22 +1.0% driven by +2.2% iPhone revenue. We continue to take comfort in growth in the active installed base of devices, which hit an all-time high in F3Q22, and we believe comments around "strong double-digit" growth in switchers to iPhone as encouraging. We were too quick to reduce our PT due to FX pressure when ex-FX we believe AAPL revenue is growing double-digits, and gross margins are up 100 bps y/y in F4Q22," the analyst added.
Apple shares are down 0.7% Friday.