Apple’s new AI initiatives could add $40 per share - analyst

Apple Inc is reinvigorating its investment appeal thanks to its latest AI announcements, and, as iPhone sales appear to be picking up again, that’s the view of stock market analysts at Wedbush.

The California-headquartered stockbroker has today lifted its price target for Apple, to $275 from $250 per share, and repeated a ‘Buy’ recommendation.

Wedbush eyes more stabile in iPhone demand, in Asia particularly, and it believes that newly discussed AI integrations will significantly enhance both Apple's services and hardware for an installed user base in excess of 2.2 billion devices.

AI integrations can add between $30 and $40 per share, according to Wedbush.

Wedbush reckons Apple can follow Microsoft in delivering an AI-centric developers conference in which it can showcase new developments.

“We believe AI technology being introduced into the Apple ecosystem will bring ample monetization opportunities on both the services as well as iPhone/hardware front,” Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives said in a note.

The conference in June promises to “kick off a new frontier”, the analyst highlighted.

“Lets be clear we believe June 10 marks Apple's most important event in a decade for Cook & Co,” Ives added.

“Introducing AI to its all-important developer community and laying the foundation for bringing generative AI to the consumer starts with Apple in our view.”

“We also believe Apple will lay the foundation for an AI App Store as developers build consumer apps on the AI stack that Cook & Co will introduce at [the conference] and will lead to additional services growth over the coming years.”