Apple investors shouldn’t give up on the tech giant, because the stock is poised to go higher, analyst Daniel Ives told CNBC on Tuesday.
“This is what I view as more of a golden buying opportunity rather than a time to throw up the white flag,” the managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities said on “Power Lunch.”
Apple shares have taken a hit recently, as investors became concerned about the iPhone cycle and lack of transparency on individual unit sales figures. The stock closed down more than 4 percent on Tuesday at $176.69, losing $38.5 billion in implied market value.
However, Ives is standing by his price target of $275 over the next 12 months. If realized, it would eclipse Apple’s $233.47 peak before the October sell-off.
Analysts at HSBC on the other hand, thinking that the iPhone maker needs a new product, decided to cut their 12-month price target on the stock from $205 to $200. The analysts said that “Apple’s iconic hardware growth is broadly over for now.”
Ives is optimistic that millions of iPhone customers will be ready to upgrade their devices within the next 18 months. He pointed out that the Apple ecosystem encompasses an estimated 750 million active units.
While demand for the iPhone XR has “lagged,” Apple has an opportunity to boost sales going into the end of the year, he said.
“That’s why right now, going into [the] holiday season, this is definitely a pivotal sort of fork-in-the-road time for Apple to make sure this demand starts to hit, which so far has been soft,” Ives said.
The tech giant recently increased the amount of credit it is willing to offer customers who are trading in older iPhones for the new models.
— CNBC’s Sara Salinas contributed to this report.
Disclosures: Wedbush Securities makes a market in shares of AAPL.
