Gold may be failing as a safe haven, but Apple stock seems to be fitting the bill, for today at least.
Apple shares are up 1.1%, which sadly places them among the 10 biggest winners in the otherwise weak S&P 500 today.
The company, which for a brief time earlier this year was the biggest US public company by market cap, is enjoying strong iPhone demand and a little analyst love this morning.
AT&T said yesterday that iPhone demand had helped it sell about 6 million smartphones in the first two months of the fourth quarter, meaning it was likely to shatter its record for quarterly smartphone sales of 6.1 million
That led UBS to raise estimates for iPhone sales in the quarter:
This morning we noted that with AT&T’s better than expected smartphone strength being driven in part by the iPhone, there was likely to be upside to our 28mn iPhone est for CY4Q. We believe that there is a general strength across the board for iPhone demand and are raising our CY4Q ests to 30mn from 28mn units.
We continue to believe that our estimates are conservative as these revised estimates are still below where expected build plans are. We conservatively leave our out quarter estimates though we believe China launches could drive upside.
Baird analysts did the same:
With AT&T seemingly positioned to sell 7 million+ iPhones, we believe the U.S. alone could generate 14 million+ iPhone sales this quarter.
AAPL revisions. Raising our CQ4 iPhone shipment estimate from 27.3 million to 31.2 million. We elected to lower our iPad shipment forecast slightly to reflect our semi team’s recent procurement checks, but are still raising EPS from $9.97 to $10.74 vs. consensus of $9.75.
Citi analysts didn’t do any raising, but they echoed AT&T’s message of strength in iPhone sales, after a fancy visit to Taiwain, la di da:
Consistent with AT&T’s pre-announcement yesterday of higher than expected iPhone activations in 4CQ11, our meetings in Taiwan suggest that Apple raised 4CQ11 iPhone orders to suppliers meaningfully just last week. The new iPhone build plan is meaningfully above the low-30’s million figure that we were hearing previously. Given such a significant order increase at this late stage in the quarter, it seems clear that Apple is headed for a meaningful upside surprise on iPhone shipments this quarter. |
