Apple Inc, is trading at an all-time high in the previous session, but there are hopes for the stock to go further up, if consumers are willing to spend marginally more for the latest iPhone.
Goldman Sachs increased its 12-month price target on Apple stop on Friday because of the expectations that Apple will introduce a super-premium smartphone with a whopping $1,000 price tag. Goldman analyst Simona Jonkowski stated that a buy rating in a note to clients, and pushed his target to $170 from $164, which means upside of more than 10% which Thursday’s closing price and would give Apple a market capitalization of nearly $900 billion.
The $1,000 iPhone unit includes a 128 gigabyte model priced at $999 and a 256 gigabyte model for $1,099 which led the brokerage to increase its estimated values on the average selling price or ASP estimate increased to $763, compared with the FactSet consensus estimate of $675.
Goldman was up in its fiscal 2018 earnings per share that is estimated to $11.50 from $11 compared with the Street view of $10.42. The higher expectations are the direct result of higher ASPs, as opposed to expectations that Apple will sell more units.
Shares of Apple have gained 1.4% trading up to $156.10 on Friday, yet another closing record high. The stock was also up by 18.2% in the past three months and 72.8% in the past year which outperforms both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 index.