Apple Stock News and Forecast: Goldman renews hope in AAPL growth

Apple (AAPL) stock jumped more than 2% at the open on Monday after a Goldman Sachs analyst said the mega-cap was a Buy due to its installed user base more than making up for headwinds on the product side. Shares of Apple rose 2.3% at Monday's open to trade at $154.50. 

Apple stock news: $199 is new Goldman price target

Goldman analyst Michael Ng slapped Apple stock with a $199 price target, which implies that AAPL has 32% left to climb from Friday's close. Ng came to this conclusion by examining Apple's installed base of 1.8 billion active devices. His conlusion was that Apple's brand loyalty was enough to provide greater confidence in growth projections and thus meaningfully lead to a higher valuation multiple compared with competitors.

"The installed base growth, secular growth in services, and new product innovation should more than offset cyclical headwinds to product revenue (e.g., longer replacement cycles, slowing industry growth for PCs & tablets)," wrote Ng.

The second part of his thesis is that the Services segment still has a lot of growth left. Ng wrote that the majority of gross profit growth will come from Services through 2027. It will rise from 33% currently to 40% by then.

In unrelated news Apple CEO Tim Cook is still receiving postive reviews from his decision to cut his target pay for 2023. This year Tim Cook can expect target pay of $49 million instead of 2022's $84 million target. In fact, when options and other parts of his compensation were tallied, Cook took home $99 million last year. Starting this year, stock-based compensation will account for 75% of his package rather than the earlier 50%. Critics wonder if the pay cut is meant to clear the way for mass layoffs later in the year. Thus far, Apple employees have missed out on the wide-ranging job cuts that have hit the largest players in the tech sector.

Apple stock forecast

Apple stock is now trading right on resistance at $155. This level stems from experience back in October of this past year and again in the early part of 2023. A break above this price level gives bulls the option of two more higher price targets. These are $160 and $175. Both price levels are quite long-term in nature. Expect any pullback to send AAPL stock back to recent support between $143 and $144.

AAPL daily chart