Displaying items by tag: AAPL

(San Francisco)

HSBC just put out a big warning to investors—it is time to sell Apple stock. The news comes as a bit of a surprise because the iPhone maker has been performing well this year and there have been rumors of a big new push into healthcare. However, HSBC says investors should get out of the stock because Apple’s new services business will disappoint. The bank summarized its view this way, saying “Services makes ecosystem more sticky but won’t necessarily enable Apple to recruit more consumers to iPhone … All in, we remain far more cautious on services than some of the numbers in the street might suggest”.

FINSUM: Not only does HSBC think the new services offerings will disappoint on the top line, but they think they will be lower margin too! It is hard to speculate how this might go, but we do think this transition to services will be harder than many expect.

(New York)

You certainly won’t think of it this way, but Morgan Stanley is arguing that Apple is now a great healthcare play. The bank’s research team says Apple is on the verge of a major new product that will transform the healthcare space, meaning there could be a lot of value in the stock that is not being priced in. Katy Hubert of MS says “Apple is building a healthcare ecosystem and is poised to emerge as a leader in consumer-centric healthcare … Healthcare is a large, greenfield services opportunity for Apple”. She continued, saying “Unlike recent announcements on news, gaming, video, and payments, where Apple is joining existing competitors, healthcare is a market where Apple has the potential to lead digital disruption”. The stock is up strongly this year because investors are happy with its shift to a more services-oriented business model.

FINSUM: It is hard to speculate on the potential impact without know the product, but we must say Apple does seem to have a major opportunity if it can map a healthcare product onto the hundreds of millions of users of its products in the US alone.