Evercore ISI reiterated an Outperform rating on Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) with a 12-month price target of $210.00.
In the past few days, Apple's stock has faced downward pressure due to ongoing geopolitical tensions between the United States and China. In a recent development, it was announced that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) instructed employees against using Apple iPhones or other foreign devices for their professional tasks.
Analysts write in a note, “China represents around 19% of Apple revenue and we think it skews heavily towards the iPhone and App Store. The iPhone dominates the high-end smartphone category in China and significant share gains in the market in recent years have helped iPhone revenue outperform expectations.”
The extent of the impact remains uncertain, as it's likely that party officials had already refrained from using American products in their workplace long before the official ban was implemented.
“We think this is more of a headline issues vs. something that will have a material impact on financial performance given government officials were likely already avoiding Apple products,” added the analysts.
The ban has been in effect to a certain degree for some time now. Even if it were to be extended to encompass strategically significant SOEs with a substantial workforce, potentially including hundreds of thousands of employees with significant spending power, Evercore anticipates that the scope of this restriction would primarily apply to top-level individuals responsible for strategic planning and decision-making within these organizations.
Shares of AAPL are down 3.23% in afternoon trading on Thursday.