American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu has slashed his target price on Apple stock, but still rates the shares as ones to buy.
With fears of recession in the U.S. driving panic on the global financial markets and interest rate cuts by the major banks, Wu warned that Apple's products would likely see some impact on sales, and pointed to Apple's own conservative US$6.8 billion guidance for revenue in the present quarter.
Responding to Apple's financial announcement this week, Wu moved to slash his target price on the stock from $210 to $175 per share, adding: "Looking in retrospect, we regret not turning more cautious on Apple shares near our price target with looming macroeconomic concerns."
The analyst also noted declining growth in iPod sales, but remarked that Macs continued to show strength, growing 44 percent year-on-year to 2.3 million units while iPods came in "surprisingly light" at 22 million units, up only 5 percent.
"While iPod revenue growth of 17 percent is the fastest in four quarters, its slow unit growth may be a cause for concern in light of a fairly recent major product refresh (new iPod nano and iPod touch). In our view, Apple faces a transition in moving its iPod upstream (much like digital cameras have) in order to minimize cannibalization from mobile phones. At the same time, AAPL is playing fairly good defense and offense with iPhone units more than doubling sequentially to 2.3 million (AmTech at 2 million)."
"We continue to believe Apple is well-positioned to weather the storm better than most with its strong fundamentals," Wu added.
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