Apple: Price Targets, Estimates Going Up on New iPad

Shares of Apple (AAPL) are up $3.54, or 0.7%, at $534.23 the morning after the company introduced its latest iPad model to the world, as well as a revamped “Apple TV” set-top box.

The praise from the Street is more or less unanimous, as it was with the early reviews, yesterday afternoon.

This morning, price targets are going up today in several corners, and estimates, in some but not all cases.

Mind you, some analysts had held off on raising price targets for months, and the stock had steadily crept up to the levels they were at, so some targets seemed ripe for an increase.

The mean target price on the Street is $594, according to Factset Research.

Bill Shope, Goldman Sachs: Reiterates a Buy rating, while raising his price target to $660 from $600, after raising his estimates to $152.38 billion in revenue this year and $42.52 in EPS, up from a prior $148.26 billion and $40.36. “Significantly, we believe the new iPad and the lower price point for the iPad 2 will enable Apple to continue its momentum and tablet market dominance, and we continue to expect rapid installed base growth in 2012 and beyond.”

Mark McKechnie, ThinkEquity: Reiterates a Buy rating, while raising his price target to $600 from $550, writing that “The launch follows the “tech playbook” of offering more functionality at a given price point.” The LTE capability in the new device should lead to an LTE iPhone later this year: “We view a new iPhone model, presumably the iPhone5 as a much more important catalyst on the horizon. Our industry checks suggest uncertain timing around the July-September time frame. Shipment of an LTE-based iPad adds confidence to our call for an LTE- based iPhone5 which we expect to also come in a thinner form factor.”

Shebly Seyrafi, FBN Securities: Reiterates an Outperform rating and raises his price target to $730 from $650, after increasing his calendar 2012�iPad shipment forecast to 61.2 million units from a prior 56.2 million. While the iPad “met many expectations,” it didn’t meet all of them, leaving out support by Sprint-Nextel (S) among carriers, and support for Apple’s “Siri” natural-language assistant, Seyrafi notes. Seyrafi raised his estimate for this fiscal year to $158.47 billion in revenue and $42.53 per share in EPS from a prior $156.29 billion and $42.09 per share.

Apple shares are up $1.86, or 0.3%, at $532.55.

Update: AppleInsider this evening reported that Radio Shack (RSH) started taking pre-orders for the iPad today, citing Radio Shack statements.

And TheBoyGeniusReport‘s Jonathan Geller wrote that some models of the iPad running on AT&T’s network had already sold out as of this afternoon, citing data from Apple’s online store.

Fin