"The entry point is rich," says Bernstein's senior Apple analyst.
Maintains Market Perform rating and $300 price target.
My take: My ears perked up when Sacconaghi said that if Apple were to become a true services company, it might command a multiple even higher than the one it has today. "How high?" was the follow-up question that didn't get asked.
CNBC can’t go off the air soon enough.
I am sure he doesn’t even know how much cash Apple generates in the last 12 months with its actual mediocre growth-rate.
Why is he still on air?
In summary, Apple is a company with a powerful combination of hardware, software and long-term-upside to Services driving the price target forward with higher multiples. Toni fails to perceive this concept in his mind.
YAY. I’m in.
He also misses that HW is already a subscription business. Nearly everyone replaces their Apple device, from a $15K Mac Pro to $159 AirPods with a new Apple version. The time scales are less predictable. But so what? Indeed, if this flu impacts near term sales, or if 5G takes off slower, Apple gets the sales eventually.
BINGO!!
It reminds me of a similar incident during my work career. We had a key executive position in senior management filled by an incompetent individual known throughout the staff to be in-over-his-head (big time), and known throughout the stakeholder community, for whom he had regulatory oversight, as incompetent. It was “his” voice heard and accepted over ours’. It was he who signed authorizations, not us. It was he who controlled the entire budget for our division. It was he who signed off on the talking points. On and on I could enumerate that the buck stopped with him because it was his butt sitting in the decision chair.
Toni is an Apple decision maker analyst for Bernstein, as long as he holds his position. If one cannot move him out of that position, then one needs to find ways to educate him on how his thinking of Apple’s fundamentals have flaws, especially as long as CNBC whisks him in front of the cameras as an Apple analyst expert on national television to pontificate on his rationale. No disrespect guys, but your tuning him out isn’t tuning Toni Sacconaghi out. He’s still someone to reckon with in the analyst community’s spin on Apple, and all things Apple.
Is he? The abysmal performance of so many ANALysts raises serious doubt about whether their employers actually pay any attention to their predictions/advice. I can’t imagine a company retaining an advisor who missed so much profit as Toni, or most of the other ANALysts employed by big-name financial firms.
My suspicion is that these companies and their fund managers have their own internal analysis departments. Thus, the primary purpose for these public analysts is to raise publicity exposure for the firm with external customers and with the public at large. By that measure “#1 Toni” is a big success, regardless of what the results of his advice would be for funds within the company.
Toni is out there front-and-center as an Apple professional analyst and as one viewed by CNBC as a professional Apple analyst “expert” pontificating away to a national television audience. Go figure! We have to deal with that fact.
To reiterate, Toni is “… still someone to reckon with in the analyst community’s spin on Apple, and all things Apple.”
CDMR (Coronavirus Doesn’t Matter Rally) today?
FUNDAMENTALS Uber Alles ! ! !