Meet The New $710 Apple Analyst Target (AAPL)

It was just yesterday that Jefferies raised its Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) price target to $699 from $599 in a research call.  Now today we have Canaccord Genuity raising its price target to $710 from $665 per share.  This is among the highest of the price targets on Wall Street.

Maintaining Apple as a Top Pick the report noted, “Since we attended the iPad launch last week, our checks have indicated record pre-orders with wait times for shipping iPad models now reaching 2-3 weeks. Given the new iPad’s leading hardware specs and iOS developer and application ecosystems versus all tablet competitors, we anticipate Apple will continue to dominate both market and value share of the growing tablet market in C2012-13. . . Apple remains a top pick.”

Apple’s pricing of the new iPad ($499 for WiFi-only, $629 for 4G base models) and iPad2(reduced to $399 for WiFi-only, $529 for 3G base models) will enable the company to maintain dominant tablet share, address more price elastic international markets, and further penetrate verticals such as enterprise and education.

Canaccord Genuity is raising 2012 iPad unit estimates to 65.6 million from 55.9 million and its 2013 estimate is going to 90.6 million from 79.7 million.  This generates Fiscal 2012 pro forma earnings per share to $44.58 from $42.81 and generates 2013 estimates up to $50.68 from $47.47 per share.

The firm’s new $710 price target is based on shares trading at roughly 14-times the firm’s 2013 pro forma EPS estimate.

JON C. OGG