Apple shares (AAPL) rose more than 5% on Tuesday, hitting an intraday record, as investors digested the announcement of its AI platform Apple Intelligence.
After falling during and after the company’s WWDC conference on Monday, the stock price rose again as some Wall Street analysts welcomed the company’s announcements.
“When you look at the signal from the noise, you see that Apple is going to introduce an unprecedented capability here and integrate AI into everyday life,” Gil Luria, managing director of DA Davidson, told Yahoo Finance (video above).
Following Monday’s event, Luria upgraded his Apple rating from “neutral” to “buy” and raised his price target from $200 to $230.
On Monday, Apple announced “Apple Intelligence,” its long-awaited foray into generative AI. The company said the platform will be integrated into all of the company’s hardware and software products, from the iPhone and Mac to email, messages, and photos. Apple Intelligence will be available this fall on the iPhone 15 Pro, as well as iPads and Macs with Apple’s M1 series chips and newer.
Key new features include updates to Siri, which can now do things like search phones for addresses sent in messages or find photos in a phone’s photo library using voice prompts. Apple also released new software updates for its iPhone, watches and computer products.
“Our experience with consumer surveys at the launch of previous iPhone generations shows that the hardware upgrade cycle is more likely to be driven by a series of feature upgrades in various applications that, taken together, will provide reasons to upgrade over the next few years,” Samik Chatterjee, senior analyst at JPMorgan, wrote in a note to clients on Monday.
He added: “The release of AI features for Mac, iPad and iPhone will support an upgrade cycle across all devices.”
The announcements capped off a month of excitement surrounding the stock, following previous rumors about some of the news, including a partnership with ChatGPT operator OpenAI.
After the iPhone maker’s stock was briefly overtaken by Nvidia (NVDA), it is now once again the second most valuable company (behind Microsoft (MSFT) in the world) with a market capitalization of over $3.1 trillion.
After a slow start to the year due to concerns about slowing iPhone demand, Apple stock has risen more than 15% in the past two months. Analysts like Luria and Chatterjee believe the next iPhone upgrade cycle could be looming, as the new AI features will only be available on the iPhone 15 Pro and later generations.
“When people buy new phones this holiday season, they’re going to see this great functionality,” Luria said. “They’re going to show it off to their friends and family, and the product upgrade cycle will happen over the next few months and quarters.”
This, Luria argued, should be an important catalyst for the stock’s further development.
“The stock is stagnant because there has been no revenue growth at Apple,” Luria said. “Now we believe that this will boost Apple’s overall growth from low single digits to mid or maybe even high single digits over the next year or two. That’s what can drive Apple’s stock.”
Josh Schafer is a reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on X @_joshschafer.
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