Apple's stock is on a tear this week as it releases a string of products in the lead up to its highly-anticipated event on Monday.
The stock had its biggest rally Thursday since January, closing up 3.7 percent at $195.09 per share for its ninth positive day in the past 10 trading days.
Apple fell just short of taking back the title of the world's largest public company from Microsoft. Still, Apple is once again approaching $1 trillion in market value, adding about $33 billion to its market capitalization Thursday, bringing it to $919.9 billion.
While Apple has put the spotlight on its hardware this week, announcing new iPads, iMacs and AirPods three days in a row (with a fourth product possibly coming Friday), the focus of Monday's event is expected to be on a new streaming video service. Teasing the event with the slogan, "It's show time," Apple is expected to introduce a new streaming TV service that will give iPhone and iPad users access to free original content and subscription channels like Starz and CBS All Access, CNBC previously reported.
Investors are already seeing a big upside to Apple's expected venture into streaming. Needham upgraded the stock on Thursday and raised its price target from $180 to $225.
In a note to investors, Needham analysts wrote that if users adopt Apple's streaming service, it "should lower churn and drive higher lifetime value." It could even attract new customers to its products and services, they wrote.
Citigroup also raised its price target on the stock from $170 to $220 on Thursday, even though analysts said in a note they don't anticipate the launch of Apple's streaming service "to be a big catalyst for the stock." They noted, rather, that the streaming is meant to drive recurring revenue for the company, in continuation of its services strategy.
Wedbush raised its price target from $200 to $215 Thursday, saying, "Monday's announcement is just the tip of the iceberg for [Apple CEO Tim] Cook's broader streaming content strategy to take hold and in our opinion adds a significant potential catalyst to the Apple services growth story for years to come." The analysts hedged slightly, noting that Apple "is definitely playing from behind the eight ball in this content arms race with Netflix, Disney, Hulu, and AT&T/Time Warner all going after this next consumer frontier."
Disclosure: Comcast, which owns CNBC parent NBCUniversal, is a co-owner of Hulu.
-CNBC's Michael Sheetz contributed to this report.
Watch: Apple announces new AirPods with wireless charging and voice control
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment