Rosenblatt trims iPhone XR estimate by 6 million units

Jun Zhang, who blows hot and cold on Apple, blows cold.

From a note to clients that landed on my desktop Monday:

After tracking sell-through data from various retail channels, we believe initial iPhone XR sales are weaker than we expected and weaker than XS/XS Max sales. We estimate global first weekend sales of the iPhone XR to be ~9 million units, 1 million units lower than sales of the XS/XS Max in the first weekend. Compared to the iPhone 8/8Plus, we believe XR sales are better, although the 8 Plus faced some constraints and a smaller sell-through base.

We are trimming our iPhone Production and shipments by 6 million units for Q4. We previously modeled new iPhone production of 90-95 million units and shipments of 80 -85 million units. We are revising our estimates to show new iPhone production of 88 million units and shipments of 76-77 million units for the second half of this year.

For the March quarter, we are modeling new iPhone production to drop 40-50% q/q. We estimate 36-37 million units produced and 35-36 million units shipped in the March quarter.

Combined with older models, we estimate C4Q iPhone shipments to be 82 million units, flat y/y from the 82 million units shipped in 4Q17. We model C1Q19 total shipments to be ~45 million, flat y/y.

Maintains Buy rating and underwater $200 price target (which makes no sense to me)

My take: Cowan’s Ackerman and Ramsay, looking at the same supply chain, are more bullish today. See here.