Many people were shocked that a single company could be worth $1 trillion when Apple (AAPL 1.80%) achieved that milestone back in August 2018. Now Evercore analyst Amit Daryanani says the technology titan will be worth twice that amount within a few years' time.
Daryanani believes Apple's stock could rally more than 70% from its current price of $323 to $550 per share. That would bring its market capitalization to a staggering $2 trillion, up from $1.4 trillion today.
Apple's stock has plenty of gains still to come, according to Evercore analyst Amit Daryanani. Image source: Getty Images.
Daryanani says strong growth in Apple's booming services and wearables businesses will help it increase its earnings per share by 14% annually to $23 by fiscal 2024, up from $11.89 in 2019. He forecasts that revenue in these segments could reach $100 billion and $60 billion, respectively, during this time.
Daryanani expects Apple's gross margins to expand, as its high-margin services segment grows to represent a larger portion of its total revenue. In turn, he believes investors will be willing to pay a higher price for its earnings, as reflected in a higher price-to-earnings multiple. Thus, he says Apple's stock could trade for 24 times his fiscal 2024 EPS estimate of $23, or approximately $550 per share.
Daryanani also projects that Apple will repurchase about 1 billion shares over the next four years, thereby reducing its share count to approximately 3.6 billion by fiscal 2024. If he's correct, a stock price of slightly more than $550 would equate to a market cap of $2 trillion at that time.
For these reasons, Daryanani argues that Apple's stock is a highly attractive investment opportunity today. "Apple continues to offer the best risk/reward in large-cap tech and long-term investors should use any weakness to add to positions," he said.
So will Apple be worth $2 trillion?
Although it may be hard to fathom that a single business could legitimately be worth $2 trillion, I find Daryanani's projections to be entirely reasonable.
Apple's massive installed base of more than 1.5 billion users is fertile ground upon which it can continue to grow its services business. Apple Pay, Apple Music, Apple News, and several other Apple services are rapidly expanding their user bases -- and the tech giant has shown that it can consistently find new ways generate even more revenue from its legion of adoring fans.
Apple's wearables business is also growing at an impressive rate, thanks to strong demand for popular products such as AirPods and Apple Watch.
Moreover, each new device and service Apple sells to its customers helps to further lock them into its ever-expanding ecosystem. If more investors come to view Apple as a utility-like tech company with reliable and recurring revenue, its P/E multiple could expand to reflect that view.
All told, I think Apple's market cap could top $2 trillion by fiscal 2024 -- and perhaps even sooner.
