By Dhirendra Tripathi
Investing.com – Apple stock (NASDAQ:AAPL) traded 0.7% higher at $176.90 in premarket Tuesday, a sign the $3-trillion market-cap tag may elude the company for one more day amid broader weakness in the indices.
The stock touched a lifetime high of $182.09 Monday to reach a market cap of $2.98 trillion, before closing 2% lower at a valuation of $2.88 trillion.
The stock, already the most valued in the world, needs to touch $182.86 to hit the coveted mark. It's only four years since the company became the world's first trillion-dollar enterprise.
Today’s strength in the stock follows a raft of upgrades by brokerages.
BofA analyst Wamsi Mohan has upgraded it to ‘buy’ from ‘neutral’ with a target of $210, up from $160. The analyst expects Apple to introduce an augmented reality/virtual reality headset, by early 2023.
The analyst also expects a stronger iPhone upgrade cycle in financial year 2023 driven by the need for higher connectivity where "AR becomes the killer app for 5G." Mohan sees higher growth coming in from services. He expects the company to charge more for more immersive AR/VR-enabled apps.
In another upgrade, Evercore’s Amit Daryanani raised the firm's target on Apple to $200 from $180, maintaining his ‘outperform’ on the shares.
This follows Monday’s upgrade by JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) JPM analyst Samik Chatterjee, who sees the stock at $210.