Amid a controversial conflict between Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk over Apple accelerating its artificial intelligence (AI) efforts, AAPL shares have hit a new all-time high (ATH), and analysts have updated their AAPL stock price targets accordingly.
Indeed, after Apple announced a partnership with OpenAI to integrate its technology directly into the operating system of its iPhones, iPads, and Mac computers, Musk has threatened to ban Apple’s devices in his companies, but this has not prevented AAPL shares from soaring.
Apple stock price prediction
Regarding the price of Apple’s shares in the next 12 months, among experts that have updated their AAPL stock price targets, be it reiterating or changing them entirely, is DA Davidson’s Gil Luria, who upgraded Apple from a ‘hold’ to a ‘buy’ rating while also raising the AAPL stock price target from $200 to $230. As Luria told Yahoo Finance:
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“If you look at the signal away from the noise, you realize that this is an unprecedented capability that Apple is going to introduce, and it’s going to integrate AI into everyday life.”
Meanwhile, Needham’s Laura Martin, despite reissuing her ‘buy’ rating with a $220 target price, explained that Apple’s recent performance at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) was disappointing, observing that:
“There was nothing we heard during the WWDC keynote that makes us believe that consumers will buy iPhones faster than our current projections.”
On the other hand, JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) analyst Samik Chatterjee, who has a ‘buy’ rating and $225 price target for Apple, said in a new investor note that the WWDC keynote demonstrated “enough enhancements” for iPhone upgrades, pointing out that:
“Our experience with consumer surveys with prior generations of iPhone launches tell us that hardware upgrade cycle is more driven by a collection of feature upgrades across diverse applications.”
‘Sell-the-news’ event?
Furthermore, KeyBanc’s Brandon Nispel, who has kept a ‘hold’ rating and offered no price target, has argued that the 2024 WWDC was a “sell-the-news-event,” sharing his company’s viewpoint that:
“We believe WWDS is a sell-the-news event where the bulls’ view, centered around an ‘iPhone Super Cycle’ triggered by Apple Intelligence (AI) being integrated into products, will likely be seen as disappointing.”
At the same time, Rosenblatt Securities’ analyst Barton Crockett reiterated Apple shares with a ‘hold’ score and held onto a price target of $196 while highlighting that advancing the AI assistant Siri would help its case, as well as that:
“Apple sells over 200 million iPhones a year and has an iPhone installed base of over 1 billion devices. But only about 10% of the installed base is the high-end iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max models that use Apple’s A17 Pro chip.”
It is also worth noting that an analyst at Bank of America Securities (NYSE: BAC), Wamsi Mohan, assigned a ‘buy’ rating and a $230 price target to Apple, stressing its newest efforts in the AI field could “lead to an upgrade cycle for AI-enabled IntelliPhones as consumers seek to increase their productivity.”
Finally, Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) analyst Erik Woodring also maintained a ‘buy’ score for Apple while standing with the price target of $216 and noting that the technology behemoth has “delivered slightly ahead of our expectations,” as he recently said in an interview for CNBC’s Closing Bell.
Apple stock price analysis
With the recent revisions, Apple’s score among Wall Street analysts currently stands at a ‘moderate buy,’ with 22 of them recommending a ‘buy’ for AAPL stock, 11 suggesting to ‘hold,’ and one vote for a ‘sell,’ with the consensus of experts suggesting an average price of $208.47 in the next 12 months.
For now, Apple shares are trading at the price of $206.14, which represents a very slight drop of 0.42% in pre-market while advancing 5.91% over the past week, adding up to the gain of 10.66% in the last month and accumulating an increase of 11.09% since the year’s beginning, as per data on June 12.
All things considered, Apple shares are demontrating strong fundamentals and potential for further price increases, which might stay in the range suggested by Wall Street analysts, make stronger advances than expected, or even make a turn for the worse, so doing one’s own research when investing is critical.
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