After Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster surprised the investing community on Monday by raising Apple’s target price from US$52 a share to $100 per share, the markets reacted by shoving Apple’s stock up more than 11%. In very heavy volume of 45.9 million shares trading hands, AAPL closed Monday at 61.35, higher by 6.18 (+11.20%), putting the stock at a 4-year high.
Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster said that a survey of 200 randomly selected iPod owners found very high brand-loyalty, and that this brand-loyalty would build demand for Apple’s other products, like the Mac.
"We believe that the remarkable satisfaction with the iPod creates a word-of-mouth wildfire that generates new customer interest in Apple products," said Mr. Munster in a report.
At $100 the stock would trade at relatively inflated 37 times the broker’s calendar 2006 earnings for the company. "While this multiple is a premium to the comp group, we believe it is warranted given the growth potential of the iPod and its carryover to the core Mac business," he said.
Over the last three months, Apple’s stock has averaged 9.9 million shares traded per day. Monday’s volume of almost 46 million shares traded is the heaviest trading TMO has seen in recent years.
AAPL has risen some 202.5% in the last 52 weeks, when it traded at $19.25 per share on December 22nd, 2003.
AAPL’s current high is $72.10 per share (split adjusted), where it traded on March 22, 2000. Should the stock reach Piper Jaffray’s target price of $100, it would set a new all-time high.