With sales of its iPhone generating around 52% of its revenue, Apple definitely feels it when economic hard times hit a key consumer market like China.
And it’s been largely due to the hit taken by Apple’s core product that the Cupertino, California-based tech giant has taken two successive equity analyst downgrades this week. The first came from Barclays, which trimmed Apple from neutral to underweight. Then Piper Sandler’s Harsh Kumar shifted Apple’s stock down from overweight to neutral.
Since the turn of the calendar year, Apple has seen its share price drop around 5% -- which has resulted in a $162 billion drop in market capitalization for what is still the world’s richest company, valued at over $2.8 trillion.
Since 2018, Apple has enjoyed the greatest run in Wall Street history, expanding by a factor of nearly 5 times and surpassing $3 trillion in market capitalization.
But Barclays analyst Tim Long suggested Apple needs a “breather” after staging a 2023 rally despite an annual decline in revenue and profit.
Our question: With its most popular product, the iPhone, about to celebrate its 17th birthday, and no consumer product in Apple’s pipeline — including Apple's pricey VR Pro — ready to step up as a key sales driver, might we be looking at a rather protracted breather?
