Wall Street analyst cuts AAPL stock target as weak iPhone sales expected to seep into new year

9to5 Staff | Jan 23 2019 - 9:57 am PT

D.A. Davidson analyst Tom Forte has cut his target price for AAPL to $245 per share, as comments continue to spread of weak iPhone sales through the start of 2019. Forte has continued to lower his target price for the stock over the past few weeks.

In December, he cut his previous target of $290 to $280. On January 3, it was lowered by $20 to $260. Today’s cut down to $245 means the stock has seen a 15% total price target decrease by the analyst in just 40 days.

Of course, January 2 is when Apple issued a rare earnings revision, slashing quarterly estimates for the first time in 16 years. Despite the drop, however, Forte continues to maintain a ‘Buy’ rating, further saying investors should “buy AAPL on the big dip“.

There’s been big talk from analysts on Apple recently. Last week, one firm suggested Apple would be forced to make more iPhone cuts, following the few we’ve seen on the Japanese and Chinese sides of the market. Prior to that, numerous suppliers and analysts were cutting earnings or shipping estimates for the company.

Forte said in the report,

We are lowering our estimates for all four calendar quarters in 2019 on the expectation that iPhone sales weakness from the December 2018 period will persist in calendar 2019.

Our new estimates reflect year-over-year unit sales declines of 8.5%, 6.9%, 4.8%, and 2.0% for the March through December 2019 quarters, respectively. We project average selling prices to decline by 3.0%, 3.0%, 3.0% and 0.5%, over the same timeframe.

Apple is set to announce holiday earnings in their Q1 2019 earnings report on Tuesday, January 29.

Forte is rated #551 of 5,122 total analysts on popular stock site TipRanks.

Are you an AAPL share holder? Either way, let us know how you feel about these continual cuts in the comments below!