“The company cannot meet demand.”
Apple spoke those magic words during its earnings call on Monday night. And the company wasn’t talking about just its revolutionary iPhone. The consuming public can’t seem to get enough iMacs and MacBooks either. Even during the worst recession since the Great Depression, Apple’s products are flying off the shelves.
That’s why Cramer thinks the stock is headed to $300 a share, a big jump from his previous $264 price target.
Look, Apple controls just 3% of the world cell-phone market and 4% of percent of personal computers, yet Steve Jobs continues to push his firm past those industries’ biggest players: Dell , Microsoft , Nokia and Motorola . And the company’s still converting nonbelievers on the regular. The end result? A quarterly beat that was 50% higher than Wall Street’s expectations.
Cramer was so bullish on Apple that he predicted next fiscal year’s earnings would reach $13 a share, up from his earlier $12 call. As for the price target, he assumed money managers would be willing to pay one time the growth rate for a high-quality growth stock like this. The equation then would look like this: the growth rate, 30%, times $13 a share equals $390. Why $300, though?
“Because you would never believe me,” Cramer said, “so I lopped off 90 bucks to be more realistic.”
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