Apple's Stock: Analysts' Price Targets Vary Wildly

For years, analysts could forecast Apple’s stock movements with a single word: up. The company’s hit parade of new products like the iPhone and iPad led to record-breaking quarterly profits and expectations that Apple could become the first U.S. corporation with a $1 trillion market value. Bullish analysts saw their own careers climb in tandem, as investors who bought the stock on their advice captured huge returns.

Now, with shares down 24 percent since Sept. 19, the challenge of predicting where the stock goes next has produced wildly varying forecasts. One analyst sees the stock falling from its Dec. 31 close of $532 to below $300 this year, while another says it will soar above $1,000. The average among analysts tracked by Bloomberg is $735. As the listing with the biggest weight in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, Apple affects anyone using the S&P as a benchmark. Mike Walkley, an analyst with Canaccord Genuity, covers 23 technology companies and says clients often want to hear about only two—Apple and Qualcomm, which makes iPhone chips. “Because if I don’t get Apple right,” he says, “I probably won’t get the rest of large-cap tech right.”