Evercore analyst Amit Daryanani has raised his price target on Apple shares, and invited investors to play “What if…?” Apple 3.0 ran part of a note he wrote on Thursday, reiterating a call made by Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty late last year. She argued then that it was time for investors to factor in augmented reality, virtual reality, and Apple Car when considering the company’s future prospects. Now, Ad-Rock is speaking similarly, at least where AR and VR are concerned. Quoting his note:
We think investors continue to underappreciate AAPL’s potential to innovate and enter new markets where they can leverage and scale AAPL’s unique platform and vertical integration capabilities. AR/VR have become a hot topic post FB’s pivot to the metaverse, but AAPL has been working on AR/VR solutions for the last 4+ years and we expect the hype into a formal launch in late 2022 to serve as a catalyst to the stock price.
It’ll help extend iOS in the analyst’s estimation, “and importantly,” he says it’ll extend the App Store “from iPhone to the VR world.” On the conservative side, if Apple’s anticipated mixed reality headset only does as well as Apple Watch, “it could contribute $18.1B to sales,” in Daryanani’s estimation. Taking a bullish view, if it’s as big a success as AirPods, the headset could add $38B in sales.
Worth noting - that is only some of what Evercore’s expecting this year. In addition to the headgear, Daryanani’s also expecting a third iPhone SE this quarter, iPhone 14 later this year, and who knows what else. With that, he reiterated his “Outperform” rating on Apple shares. He also raised his price target on the shares from $180 to $210, as he sees “wearables becoming an important growth vector.”
