While Fools should generally take the opinion of Wall Street with a grain of salt, it's not a bad idea to take a closer look at particularly stock-shaking analyst upgrades and downgrades -- just in case their reasoning behind the call makes sense.
What: Shares of Apple (AAPL -0.57%) rallied about 3% Wednesday after Canaccord Genuity reiterated its Buy rating on the consumer electronics gorilla.
So what: Along with the bullish call, analyst Michael Walkley planted a price target of $112 on the stock, representing about 18% worth of upside to Tuesday's close. So while contrarian traders might be attracted to Apple's price strength over the past year, Walkley's call could reflect a sense on Wall Street that its growth prospects still aren't fully baked into the valuation.
Now what: According to Canaccord, Apple's risk/reward trade-off remains rather attractive at this point. "With our recent surveys indicating growing consumer awareness and channel willingness to pay more for new larger-screen iPhones, we still anticipate a very strong iPhone 6 upgrade cycle," said Walkley. "Further, we believe Apple will charge a premium for these larger-screen iPhones resulting in stable gross margin trends for overall Apple but with a higher gross margin dollar contribution due to an increasing revenue mix from higher ASP iPhones." When you couple that upbeat outlook with Apple's still-reasonable forward P/E in the low-teens, it's tough to disagree with Canaccord's bullishness.
