Wedbush: Optimistic first-week sales of iPhone 16 series, Apple's stock price starts a new round of gains

According to the Zhitong Finance and Economics APP, the well-known Wall Street investment firm Wedbush Securities, which has long been bullish on technology stocks, stated that despite some relatively negative concerns, the firm insists that the first-week sales of the iPhone 16 series seem very optimistic for Apple Inc. (AAPL.US)'s performance growth. They mentioned that the first-week sales data of the new generation iPhone seems to mark the "beginning of a new round of price increase for Apple's stock". Wedbush's senior analyst Dan Ives maintained the "outperform" rating on Apple's stock and a 12-month target price of up to $300. In pre-market trading on Monday, Apple's stock price remained relatively unchanged, falling slightly by 0.53% to $226.980 at the time of writing. "With the official launch of the Apple iPhone 16 series over the weekend, we believe that Apple will see a 'very strong demand beginning' in this crucial smartphone upgrade cycle," wrote Dan Ives' Wedbush analysis team in an investor report. "While the heavyweight AI feature Apple Intelligence will be released in stages over the next few months, we believe that starting from the sales quarter in December, the unit sales growth of the iPhone 16 series will reach high single digits and may even reach double digits." It is understood that Mark Gurman, a well-known Apple scoop columnist from Bloomberg, also stated that based on the early buzz on the release day, the iPhone 16 series "is likely to become a popular product line for Apple." Gurman is globally renowned for accurately revealing details of iPhone product updates ahead of time. Ives' team further added that with artificial intelligence functions set to be fully introduced, as well as camera upgrades and extended battery life as part of the iPhone 16 series refresh, the upgrade cycle for the iPhone 16 series products may see an initial shipment volume of 90 million units in 2024, an increase of 80 to 100 million units compared to the iPhone 15 series. The team stated, "Based on our research and forecasts, out of approximately 1.5 billion iPhone products over the past 4 years, around 300 million have not yet been upgraded. This provides an excellent historical opportunity for Apple's iPhone upgrade cycle, making the iPhone 16 series likely to kick off what we see as the beginning of a consumer electronics super upgrade cycle driven by AI technology." The team added that throughout the entire 2025 fiscal year, Apple is expected to sell over 240 million iPhone products, "as this AI-driven upgrade cycle is gaining strong momentum." Prior to the release of the reiterated target stock price for Apple and the belief that first-week sales are an "optimistic start" for Apple's stock, the Wedbush Securities analysis team had repeatedly stated that increasing market research evidence indicates that the next generation of Apple smartphones (i.e., the iPhone 16 series) - may bring about the long-awaited "growth revival" for Apple product fans and Apple stock fans, ushering in a new "super upgrade cycle" Apple's total market value currently stands at a staggering $3.47 trillion, firmly holding the title of "the world's highest market cap listed company". Other Wall Street institutions are generally optimistic about Apple's stock price trend in the next 12 months. Morgan Stanley, a major Wall Street bank, has set a target price of $273 and reiterated a "buy" rating. Another Wall Street giant, Citigroup, has even listed Apple as its "top pick" for AI-related stocks by 2025, with a target price of $255. Apple currently leads the list of Citigroup's AI stocks, ahead of AI infrastructure leader NVIDIA (NVDA.US) and Arista Networks (ANET.US). Tipranks shows that the average target price given by Wall Street analysts for Apple is as high as $249.83, indicating that the "market cap giant" Apple, with a market value of $3 trillion, has nearly 10% upside potential in the eyes of Wall Street analysts