Apple shares hit an all-time high of $334.68 on July 16.
The stock was up 23% on the year, the product pipeline was looking unusually stacked, and most of the analyst community already had a Buy on it.
Then, on July 17, one of the banks that had been sitting on the sidelines decided it had seen enough.
HSBC analyst Nicolas Cote-Colisson upgraded Apple from Hold to Buy and raised his price target from $260 to $366. He said Apple is now at "an operational turning point."
The upgrade came with a detailed explanation of why he had been cautious before and what changed his mind.
Cote-Colisson had spent most of 2026 preferring other parts of the AI trade over Apple. His firm had been more focused on hyperscalers and memory chip manufacturers, which it saw as better positioned to capture the immediate AI infrastructure boom. Apple was on Hold while those names were the preferred call.
The switch comes from a different read on where Apple sits in the AI economy. Most AI infrastructure plays are spending enormous amounts on capital expenditure, CNBC reported.
Apple is not. The firm invests roughly 2.5% of its 2026 estimated sales in capex. Hyperscalers are running at 39%. That gap is a big part of what Cote-Colisson is highlighting.
Related: Citi revamps Apple's stock price target for the rest of 2026
"Apple is now at an operational turning point: not only can the company stay away from the (too) high capex debate… it is also well placed to leverage its 2.5 billion installed device base with its forthcoming revamped Apple Intelligence," Cote-Colisson wrote in his note.
In other words, Apple gets AI exposure without the capital spending burden that comes with building data centers. That's a different kind of bet from a hyperscaler, and HSBC thinks the market hasn't fully priced it in yet.
The upgrade isn't just an AI call. A lot of it is about what Apple is planning to release. Cote-Colisson described the upcoming product lineup as one of Apple's most innovative in years, Investing.com reported.
The pipeline he's pointing to includes the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max coming this fall, an iPhone Air expected in April 2027, and a book-style foldable iPhone that HSBC flagged as the most significant new device in the lineup.
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Source: Yahoo Finance Top News — This article was automatically imported from the source. Read full article at original source →
