The first company to reach the $3 trillion stock market value, Apple has lost a third of it in this past year. Exactly 366 days ago, the Cupertino company reached this mark, and it’s now worth less than $2 trillion for the first time since March 2021.
According to Reuters, investors worry that a slow global economy and high inflation could hurt demand for Apple devices.
[Yesterday] Apple’s shares declined 3.7% to $125.07 after Exane BNP Paribas analyst Jerome Ramel downgraded the company to “neutral” from “outperform,” slashing his price target to $140 from $180, according to Refinitiv Eikon.
Ramel also cut his iPhone shipment targets for fiscal 2023 to 224 million units, reflecting Foxconn’s supply chain issues and consumers cutting back spending on high-end phones.
Analysts, on average, expect Apple to report a 1% drop in December-quarter revenue in the coming weeks, according to what Refinitiv told Reuters. This would mark the company’s first quarterly revenue decline since the beginning of 2019.
As reported yesterday, Nikkei Asia sources say Apple has notified suppliers to make fewer components for AirPods, Apple Watch, and MacBook models.
“Apple has alerted us to lower orders for almost all product lines actually since the quarter ending December, partly because the demand is not that strong,” a manager at an Apple supplier told Nikkei Asia. “The supply chain in China is still trying to cope with the latest abrupt policy turns, which brought a shortage of laborers because of the sharp COVID surges.”
Combining high inflation with the expectation of a slow global economy, COVID outbreaks in China, and poor sales of the current generation of Apple products, the recent stock market value of the company will likely fall a bit more before reaching a new high.
BGR will keep reporting on Apple’s latest products and how the company performs in a global economy in recession.
