More Wild Guesses About Apple's Stock Price In 2008
2008-01-01
Here we are at the start of 2008 and AAPL has a price of $198.08 per share. About a year ago when it was 91.66, I predicted that it would hit 160 by the end of 2007. To my surprise, it got there several months early (October), and has continued to rise.
In October 2007 I made another prediction: $225 by the end of 2008. That seemed pretty wild at the time, but soon after all the analysts moved their targets up and now they are mostly saying $225-$250 for the end of 2008. Some are toying with $300, and one has even said $600 in 18 months.
Just to confuse everyone Apple is notoriously conservative with their estimates, and so the analysts beef it up a little (and still come up short). Last quarter Apple was uncharacteristically bullish and everyone was surprised. But it seems that Apple was being conservative yet again, as all the indications are that this has been a blow-out season and the numbers will be very good again.
I got to $225 by taking $160 and adding 20% for growth and 20% for the "look out here they come" factor. Now the price is just shy of $200, I'm going to adjust my guess again. I'm increasing my annual growth estimate to 30% based on expectations for the Mac and iPhone, and adding 25% as the "look out here they come" factor. The latter is a wild guess based partly what I see in terms of realization that Apple really is taking over, and partly on the effect on the investing public of the products and stores. People go into the stores or buy the products for the first time and are so wowed that they (or their parents) go buy stock ASAP. For a high-flying stock AAPL has a remarkably small short ratio.
That puts my current wild guess at $310 for the end of 2008. It will be interesting to see what the quarter's results are like when they are announced January 22nd.
In October 2007 I made another prediction: $225 by the end of 2008. That seemed pretty wild at the time, but soon after all the analysts moved their targets up and now they are mostly saying $225-$250 for the end of 2008. Some are toying with $300, and one has even said $600 in 18 months.
Just to confuse everyone Apple is notoriously conservative with their estimates, and so the analysts beef it up a little (and still come up short). Last quarter Apple was uncharacteristically bullish and everyone was surprised. But it seems that Apple was being conservative yet again, as all the indications are that this has been a blow-out season and the numbers will be very good again.
I got to $225 by taking $160 and adding 20% for growth and 20% for the "look out here they come" factor. Now the price is just shy of $200, I'm going to adjust my guess again. I'm increasing my annual growth estimate to 30% based on expectations for the Mac and iPhone, and adding 25% as the "look out here they come" factor. The latter is a wild guess based partly what I see in terms of realization that Apple really is taking over, and partly on the effect on the investing public of the products and stores. People go into the stores or buy the products for the first time and are so wowed that they (or their parents) go buy stock ASAP. For a high-flying stock AAPL has a remarkably small short ratio.
That puts my current wild guess at $310 for the end of 2008. It will be interesting to see what the quarter's results are like when they are announced January 22nd.
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