Wells Fargo believes 'iPhone 7' will reaccelerate Apple growth, sell 80M+ this holiday

With Apple set to report its first-ever year-over-year decline in iPhone sales this afternoon, analysts continue to look forward to the anticipated "iPhone 7" launch in hopes that it will re-stimulate growth.

Wells Fargo analyst Maynard Um issued a note to investors this week, ahead of today's earnings report, in which he said he expects the "iPhone 7" will see a return to growth for Apple in the December quarter. Apple has already said iPhone sales would decline in the just-concluded March quarter.

Currently, he projects Apple could reach as many as 82.2 million iPhone units in the holiday frame. While that's a few quarters out, he believes his forecast is higher than market expectations.

Um believes analysts on Wall Street are too pessimistic, and potential growth following an "iPhone 7" launch is not yet priced into the company's shares.

For the March quarter, Wall Street is expecting sales of $52 billion and earnings per share of $2.00. The market also expects Apple will have sold 50 million iPhones in the three-month span, a decline from 61 million a year ago.

Um's own estimates call for Apple to have sold $51.7 billion with earnings per share of $2.01.

Looking forward to Apple's third fiscal quarter of 2016, the Street is currently expecting $47.4 billion in sales and $1.76 EPS. Um and Wells Fargo are forecasting $45.2 billion and $1.64.

Apple will report the results of its March quarter, and provide guidance for the June quarter, after markets close today. A conference call with the company's executive team to discuss the results will begin at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific. AppleInsider will have full, live coverage of the event.

Wells Fargo has maintained an "outperform" rating for AAPL stock, with a valuation range of $120 to $130.

19 Comments

fotoformat 302 comments · 13 Years

About 8 years ago

"Wells Fargo analyst Maynard Um issued a note to investors this week, ahead of today's earnings report, in which he said he expects the "iPhone 7" will see a return to growth for Apple in the December quarter." Who'da thunk it... the man's brilliant!

jungmark 6927 comments · 13 Years

Analysts are a joke. One jokers says the 7 is "nothing new" and another says it will be super duper successful.

suddenly newton 13819 comments · 14 Years

rogifan_new 4297 comments · 9 Years

sog35 said:

This is silly talk.

Who gives a crap how many phones Apple sells in a specific quarter.

Its all about GROWING THE USER BASE. Then selling services to this user base.

This has been an absolute failure by Tim Cook. Apple is not a widgets company only concerned about increasing units sold. Apple is a life style and PLATFORM company. The emphasis should be on GROWING THE USER BASE not units sold in a 3 month window.

As long as the user base keeps growing and the services keep growing Apple will be the King.

Tim Cook needs to focus on growing the user base and improving the ecosystem of services. Enough with this simpleton bean counter crap (iPhone units).

Quit spinning the stupid Wall Street nonsense. Services exist to make buying an Apple products more attractive not to be huge revenue generators in and of themselves. When Apple was selling record numbers of iPhones you weren't banging on about services and neither was Wall Street. But now you're in complete panic because Tim Cook hasn't transformed Apple in to some mythical "services" company. Where is the evidence enough people will buy Apple "services" to turn it into some iPhone like revenue generator? Apple has over 800M credit card accounts on file. Yet only roughly 2.5% are Apple Music subscribers. I'm very skeptical Apple is going to get a large portion of the user base to pay for a bunch of add on "services". John Kirk over at Techpinions has a great piece up about this. https://techpinions.com/apple-shouldnt-cross-that-road-till-they-come-to-it/45209

If Apple needs to get away from the boom and bust of seasonal product cycles and more predictable revenue streams then it should expand the iPhone upgrade program to other product line.

mubaili 454 comments · 13 Years

Wrong. I am super happy with my 6S plus, it has everything I could ask for a phone and some more. I will break my upgrade every year tradition this year and wait till it completely died out to upgrade. Long live iPhone 6s Plus and Apple is doomed. Sorry. I will upgrade the Watch though if it can untether from iPhone.