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Apple Inc. shares climbed to yet another record high Tuesday, as analysts cheered the company’s intent to put custom processors in the Mac and the deeper integration of its various operating systems.
Apple AAPL, +2.13% shares gained 2.1% in the session to finish at $366.53, the sixth time this month that the stock has closed at a record high. The stock has rallied 63% in the past three months, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.50% — which counts Apple as a component — has gained 41%.
Apple’s keynote address at its WWDC developers conference — in which the company previewed software updates for its various devices and confirmed its rumors plans to put its own silicon chips in its Macs over the next couple of years — was cheered by most analysts Tuesday morning.
“Perhaps the biggest takeaway from today’s event was the reassurance that Apple is still driving innovation and new ways to use technology hardware and software,” wrote Bank of America’s Wamsi Mohan, who pointed to “AirPods incorporating surround sound and spatial audio, the Watch supporting more health workouts, tracking user dance movements and tracking sleep.”
He has a buy rating and $390 price objective on Apple’s stock.
UBS analyst Timothy Arcuri said that Apple’s chip announcement marked “a continuation of its strategy of vertical integration following years of convergence in its mobile and MacOS.” The rest of the updates were largely “aimed at using integration to drive even more stickiness of the ecosystem,” he wrote in a note to clients, while upping his price target to $400 from $325 and maintaining a buy rating.
Oppenheimer’s Andrew Uerkwitz called the decision to introduce custom Mac chips a “historic move” that validates the moat Apple is building by bringing all elements of its ecosystem closer together. He reiterated an outperform rating and $320 target price.
Praise was not universal, as some analysts weighed in on what was missing from the event.
“Apple provided virtually no updated operational or financial metrics, had little to say about the progress of Apple TV+, opted not to comment on current developer/ regulatory scrutiny on the App Store, and provided relatively marginal updates on key initiatives such as health or ARKit,” Bernstein’s Toni Sacconaghi wrote of the keynote.
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Sacconaghi maintained a market perform rating but bumped his price target to $375 from $285.
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Instinet’s Jeffrey Kvaal called the presentation “a bit vanilla” and said that Apple “may have missed a chance to launch more features tied to the post-pandemic world or to tee up its impending 5G phone.” He has a neutral rating and $250 price target on Apple’s stock.
