In a note to clients issued early Friday, Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner raised his Apple price target to US$345 in a note to clients Friday, as reported by “Fortune” (http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/10/08/oppenheimer-raises-aapl-target-to-345-apple-not-too-big-to-blow-it-out/?source=yahoo_quote). However, the rumors of an impending Verizon iPhone causes him some concern.
“Apple’s stock has performed admirably this year (up 37% YTD), but it has significantly lagged the improvement in the company’s fundamentals, which have driven FY10 consensus EPS estimates up by 75% since January,” Reiner told clients. “If there’s one thing making us nervous about Apple right now it’s the mounting expectation that Verizon will launch the iPhone in 1Q11. We still don’t see the motivation — for Apple or Verizon — for launching a CDMA phone midway through the iPhone 4’s product cycle. A 2H11 release of a new LTE-VZ phone seems much more plausible.”
