Apple - AAPL Stock Forecast, Price & News

Apple Inc. designs, manufactures, and markets smartphones, personal computers, tablets, wearables, and accessories worldwide. It also sells various related services. In addition, the company offers iPhone, a line of smartphones; Mac, a line of personal computers; iPad, a line of multi-purpose tablets; AirPods Max, an over-ear wireless headphone; and wearables, home, and accessories comprising AirPods, Apple TV, Apple Watch, Beats products, HomePod, and iPod touch. Further, it provides AppleCare support services; cloud services store services; and operates various platforms, including the App Store that allow customers to discover and download applications and digital content, such as books, music, video, games, and podcasts. Additionally, the company offers various services, such as Apple Arcade, a game subscription service; Apple Music, which offers users a curated listening experience with on-demand radio stations; Apple News+, a subscription news and magazine service; Apple TV+, which offers exclusive original content; Apple Card, a co-branded credit card; and Apple Pay, a cashless payment service, as well as licenses its intellectual property. The company serves consumers, and small and mid-sized businesses; and the education, enterprise, and government markets. It distributes third-party applications for its products through the App Store. The company also sells its products through its retail and online stores, and direct sales force; and third-party cellular network carriers, wholesalers, retailers, and resellers. Apple Inc. was incorporated in 1977 and is headquartered in Cupertino, California.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several analysts have recently weighed in on the stock. Citigroup boosted their price objective on shares of Apple from $175.00 to $185.00 and gave the stock a "buy" rating in a research report on Friday, July 29th. Fundamental Research set a $177.07 price objective on Apple and gave the stock a "buy" rating in a report on Thursday, August 4th. Piper Sandler reduced their price target on shares of Apple from $200.00 to $195.00 in a research report on Friday, April 29th. set a $175.00 price objective on Apple in a research report on Friday, July 29th. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. set a $200.00 price target on Apple in a research note on Monday, July 25th. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, eight have assigned a hold rating, twenty-three have given a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of "Moderate Buy" and a consensus price target of $179.27.

Apple Price Performance

Shares of AAPL traded up $3.61 during trading hours on Friday, reaching $172.10. 68,039,382 shares of the company traded hands, compared to its average volume of 69,051,512. The stock has a market capitalization of $2.77 trillion, a PE ratio of 28.40, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.18 and a beta of 1.23. The stock has a fifty day simple moving average of $148.26 and a 200 day simple moving average of $157.30. Apple has a fifty-two week low of $129.04 and a fifty-two week high of $182.94. The company has a quick ratio of 0.82, a current ratio of 0.86 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.63.

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL - Get Rating) last released its earnings results on Thursday, July 28th. The iPhone maker reported $1.20 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts' consensus estimates of $1.14 by $0.06. The company had revenue of $82.96 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $82.97 billion. Apple had a net margin of 25.71% and a return on equity of 152.97%. The firm's quarterly revenue was up 1.9% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the prior year, the firm earned $1.30 EPS. As a group, research analysts predict that Apple will post 6.1 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Apple Dividend Announcement

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, August 11th. Shareholders of record on Monday, August 8th were paid a $0.23 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Friday, August 5th. This represents a $0.92 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.53%. Apple's payout ratio is currently 15.18%.

Insider Buying and Selling at Apple

In other news, SVP Katherine L. Adams sold 25,000 shares of the firm's stock in a transaction on Wednesday, August 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $164.77, for a total transaction of $4,119,250.00. Following the sale, the senior vice president now owns 427,334 shares in the company, valued at $70,411,823.18. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. 0.06% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.