Apple Inc. sales of iPhone 12 have surpassed Wedbush’s “case scenario” for fiscal year 2021, based on checks in the Asian supply chain, and stocks are expected to rise, with December results coming soon, analyst Dan Ives wrote on Thursday. “We believe that Apple has seen a robust Christmas / holiday season not only on the iPhone, but also had strong AirPods performance, which will be another product of the tailwind in 2021 for Cook & Co,” Ives wrote. Controls in Asia suggest that the supply chain expects construction to fall to the mid-90 million iPhone units for that quarter, before the comfortable 80 million to mid-80s range expected in mid-December, 75 million expected in late October and 65 million to 70 million a few months ago, he wrote. “This is an increase of about 35% from our initial and street estimates. For the March quarter, we believe that accumulations for total iPhones have increased again by another 5% in the last week and are now between 60 and 70 We believe that the initial versions fall in the low range of 40 million, with an upward trend. We have not seen an upward launch trend like this in a few years for Apple and the only similar iPhone trajectory would be iPhone 6 in 2014, based on our analysis, “Ives said. The Wall Street consensus refers to sales of 217 million iPhone units in fiscal year 2021, but Wedbush sees the potential of up to 240 million units, “which would easily eclipse Apple’s previous record of 231 million units sold in fiscal year 15. Importantly, with our estimate that 350 million 950 million iPhones worldwide are currently in the window of an upgrade opportunity, we believe this will translate into an unprecedented upgrade cycle for Cook & Co., “Ives said. Wedbush rates Apple as the best performer with a target price of $ 160 for 12 months and a target for a bull case of $ 200. Shares of Apple rose 0.5% premarket and gained 82% in 2020, while Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA,
gained 6.6% and the S&P 500 SPX,
gained 15.5%.