المحليين عطوها تارجيت الى 100 Apple gains as analysts bite into stock
By Rex Crum, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 10:37 AM ET Nov. 29, 2004
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SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) - Apple Computer shares closed in on the $70 mark Monday following a spate of new target prices and positive analyst views on the company and its outlook for the iPod and other products.





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Apple (AAPL: news, chart, profile) climbed $4.87, or 7.5 percent, to $69.42, and was the second-most active stock on the Nasdaq Composite Index ($COMPQ: news, chart, profile) after Merrill Lynch, UBS and Banc of America Securities all raised their price targets on Apple's stock.

The Apple moves come less than a week after Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster set a $100 price target on Apple's stock and said there were signs that the iPod was beginning to positively impact iMac sales. See full story.

Merrill analyst Steven Milunovich raised his estimate on Apple to $78 a share from $61, saying the adoption rate of the iPod digital music player has outpaced that of Sony's (SNE: news, chart, profile) Walkman. Milunovich raised his iPod sales estimates for Apple's current quarter to 4 million units from 3.5 million, and increased his fiscal-year 2005 target to 12.9 million from 10.7 million shipments.

Additionally, Milunovich raised his 2005 earnings-per-share estimate on Apple to $1.45 from $1.38, and raised his 2006 forecast to $1.80 a share from $1.71.

Milunovich said the iPod could see greater growth next year, and believes Apple is preparing to release a flash-memory version of the music player in early 2005. Flash memory players hold fewer songs than the hard-drive based iPod, but the devices are also less expensive and the market for such players is larger than that of hard-drive music players.