In its report, the firm totally ignored or at the very least failed to mention the Apple Watch. MarketWatch reported that sales of the Apple Watch dropped 90% since the opening week, which could in fact play a role in Canaccord Genuity’s report.
Canaccord Genuity’s global wireless surveys over the June quarter indicated strong iPhone 6 and 6 Plus smartphone sales, as the iPhone remained the top-selling smartphone at all four tier-1 U.S. carriers, with overall sell-through share estimated near 50%.
In a broad sense, Canaccord Genuity lowered its global 2015 smartphone estimates to 1.39 billion from 1.45 billion, in part due to weak high-end Android smartphone sales versus the iPhone. The firm believes these trends are consistent with disappointing second-quarter results from Samsung and HTC.
The brokerage firm believes Apple’s very strong iPhone 6 upgrade cycle should continue through 2015, due to ongoing upgrade sales and high-end market share gains. Considering the firm’s estimate that only 20% of the iPhone installed base had upgraded to the iPhone 6 devices by the end of second quarter of fiscal 2015, Canaccord Genuity anticipates continued strong replacement sales to existing iPhone consumers.
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Additionally, the firm anticipates continued high-end smartphone market share gains for the larger screen iPhone 6 devices, as its surveys indicate a greater mix of Android smartphone consumers are switching to the iPhone 6 than during iPhone 5 series launches. Canaccord Genuity believes these trends should grow the iPhone installed base to over 500 million by the end of 2015, and this base should drive strong future iPhone replacement sales, earnings, as well as cash flow generation to fund strong long-term capital returns programs, consistent with the $200 billion program announced in April.
As a result Canaccord Genuity reiterated a Buy rating with a $160 price target. Considering Apple’s ongoing high-end smartphone market share gains, the firm raised its fiscal third quarter to 50.5 million from 47.1 million. At the same time, calendar 2015 and 2016 iPhone unit estimates were raised to 235.2 million and 233.3 million, from 226.6 million and 227.3 million, respectively.
The firm also raised its calendar 2015 and 2016 earnings per share (EPS) estimates to $9.17 and $10.02 from $8.91 and $9.90, respectively.
Shares of Apple were down 1.6% at $123.61 Wednesday morning. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $148.88 and a 52-week trading range of $92.57 to $134.54.
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