Apple: Caris Launches With Buy Rating, $120 Target

Caris & Co.’s new hardware analyst, Rob Cihra , today launched coverage of Apple (AAPL) with a Buy rating and a $120 price target. He also picked up coverage of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) , Dell (DELL) and EMC (EMC) with Average ratings, and started IBM (IBM) at Above Average. Here are a few tidbits from his reports this morning: Apple: While he expects weak global IT demand to pressure the PC market throughout 2009, Cihra writes that “Apple still offers unique product-cycle driven opportunities that are hard to match and can sustain positive organic growth even against a touch macro.” He contends that the iPhone will drive more than 80% of Apple’s overall growth over the next 2 years, and account for 26% of revenues and 35% of gross profits by FY 2010. He expects profits of $5.29 in FY 2009, and $5.73 in FY 2010. IBM : Cihra write that IBM shares “certainly could be a bit range-bound near term, given both weak IT trends market-wide and ... (link)