Apple's (AAPL) Rumored Home Automation Push a Positive for Control4
(CTRL), Needham & Company Says
May 27, 2014 11:13 AM EDT
Needham & Company analyst Scott Zeller reiterated his bullish stance on Control4 Corporation (NASDAQ:
CTRL) amid reports over the weekend which highlighted Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) rumored plans for
unveiling a “push” into home automation at its upcoming WW developer conference, scheduled for next
week June 2-6th.
"We believe Control 4 is likely to benefit from a “rising tide” of large-cap players (e.g. GOOG, AAPL) showing
interest in home automation and the Internet-of-things," Zeller said. "We also anticipate CTRL increasingly
being viewed as an acquisition target, following last week’s AMX acquisition by Harman (NYSE: HAR), and
January’s Nest acquisition by Google (NASDAQ: GOOG).
Zeller notes Control4 is a leader in its niche – integration of disparate hardware. "CTRL is a mainstream
leader in its niche market, which is the “slice” of home automation dealing with integration of disparate
hardware from hundreds of consumer electronics providers," he said. "CTRL also benefits from being
“neutral”, as it does not push its own “stack”. A recent case of such benefit was Nest, and how CTRL
was one of the only home automation providers which Nest opened itself to as a partner before being
acquired by Google. It remains unclear whether large consumer OEMs will “open” themselves to Apple."
The firm maintained a Buy rating and price target of $23 on CTRL.
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