Short Interest in Apple Falls by 3 Million Shares

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 3:25PM EST · Published Jan 28, 9:40AM EST

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Short Interest in Apple Falls by 3 Million Shares — © courtesy of Apple Inc.

[cnxvideo id=”655426″ placement=”ros”]The number of shares sold short in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) fell by 3.1 million for the two-week period that ended January 13. That left the total at 44.5 million. For the period, Apple was the 12th most shorted stock on the Nasdaq.

Apple remains a behemoth, the most valuable company in the world. Its market cap is $645 billion. At $122, its shares trade at their 52-week high, up from a period low of $89. However, there are nagging questions about the consumer electronics company’s short-term future. Apple iPhone 7 sales have not outpaced early expectations. The phone is not a revolution compared to earlier models. Recent releases of Apple’s new Macs have been greeted with mediocre reviews.

There are also concerns about Apple’s lack of success in the world’s largest markets. Its sales in China usually run behind those of local manufacturers. Its problems in the world’s second largest nation by population are worse, according to 24/7 Wall St.:

Apple Inc. has not fared well in the Indian market share wars, even though the company reportedly sold 2.5 million iPhones in India in 2016, according to a report from Counterpoint Technology Market Research.

Counterpoint said that India’s smartphone user base grew 18% in 2016 to top 300 million. A back of the envelope calculation would indicate total 2016 sales in the country came in at around 46 million smartphones. Apple’s share of that is about 5.4%.

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As for upcoming earnings, 24/7 Wall St.’s analysis:

Despite all the positive sentiment that most analysts have surrounding Apple, one issued a call that was not in line with the general consensus. Earlier this month, Barclays downgraded Apple to an Equal Weight rating from Overweight and lowered the price target to $117 from $119. The good news here for the Apple bulls is that this downgrade has a lot of a valuation ring to it, even if there are some fundamental issues brought up.

There is a fear that iPhone sales will prove to be lackluster during this year. Barclays also pointed to the lack of major issues to move the needle in 2017. What is really being said here, particularly in light of such a close analyst target price, is that Apple is going to be dead money. Not all analysts agree with Barclays, but some other recent analyst calls express some of the same concerns.

Prior to the release of the earnings report, a fair amount of other analysts weighed in on Apple:

Bernstein reiterated an Outperform rating.

Credit Suisse reiterated an Outperform rating with a $150 price target.

Piper Jaffray reiterated an Overweight rating with a $155 price target.

JPMorgan reiterated an Overweight rating.

RBC Capital Markets reiterated an Outperform rating with a $125 price target.
Baird reiterated an Outperform rating with a $133 price target.

Cowen reiterated an Outperform rating.

Barclays downgraded to an Equal Weight rating with a $117 price target.

Macquarie has an Outperform rating with a $148 price target.

Merrill Lynch has a Buy rating with a $140 price target.

Morgan Stanley reiterated an Overweight rating with a $148 price target.

Goldman Sachs reiterated a Buy rating with a $133 price target.

For the most part, price targets are above the current share price, but often not by much.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.