Citi Cuts Apple Target Price To $153, Joining Other Markdowns
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Citi Wednesday cut its target price for Apple to $153 from $170, joining several other analyst firms reducing Apple share price while advising investors the Cupertino company remains a good buy.
“We believe this is an attractive opportunity to buy a leading technology innovator on sale,” analyst Richard Gardner told clients Wednesday.
Although the financial firm reduced estimates for fiscal 2009 through fiscal 2010, Citi maintained a “Buy” rating for Apple shares.
Gardner cuts his Mac sales projection for 2009 to 10.05 million from 10.20 million. On Tuesday, Apple said it shipped 2.6 million Macs, below expectations.
In a similar downgrade, UBS cut its target price for Apple shares to $115 from $125 and downgraded its client recommendation to “Neutral” from “Buy.”
Noting the nearly-flat growth of Mac sales which missed Wall Street expectations, analyst Maynard Um pointed to the economic uncertainty which lies ahead.
UBS predicts Apple earnings for 2009 will reach $37 billion, down from $37.8 billion it had projected.
Earlier today ThinkPanmure analyst Vijay Rakesh cut Apple’s target price to $140 from $170, despite stronger-than-expected iPhone sales of 6.9 million in the fourth quarter.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
