Shares in iPhone-maker Apple have slumped over the past few days, with the tech giant having suffered two analyst rating downgrades this week.
Jefferies (JEF) analyst Edison Lee lowered the investment bank’s rating on Apple shares to “underperform” and decreased his price target on the stock by 13% to $200.75 (£162.88) on Monday.
Lee said in an investor note that he expected Apple’s first quarter results — which are due out next week — to come in below expectations, and for the company to miss against estimates for the second quarter on weak iPhone sales and a lack of interest in AI among consumers.
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Meanwhile, Loop Capital downgraded Apple from “buy” to “hold” and lowered its price target on the stock from $275 to $230.
Shares have also come under pressure as research has pointed to weaker smartphone market share for the iPhone in China. Counterpoint Research found sales of Apple’s iPhones fell 18.2% in China in the December quarter, according to a Bloomberg report. The research also showed that the iPhone gave up its title of the top selling smartphone handsets in China to Huawei Technologies.
Data from market analyst firm Canalys, released last week, showed that Apple lost its top spot as the smartphone maker with the biggest market share in mainland China.
The fall in Apple shares this week has seen it overtaken once again by Nvidia (NVDA) to take title as the world’s most valuable company.
Chip designer Arm Holding’s stock surged nearly 16% in Wednesday’s session, after CEO Rene Haas spoke of the company’s role in the US “Stargate” AI project.
Haas said in an interview with CNBC that the project was “a pretty big deal when you just think about the scale of investment that we’re talking about”.
Newly reinstated US president Donald Trump unveiled the project on Tuesday, announcing $500bn in private sector investment to build the AI infrastructure in the US.
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Initial equity funders for the project are OpenAI, Oracle (ORCL), SoftBank (9984.T) and MGX, while Nvidia (NVDA) is one of the initial technology partners.
Shares in the companies surged following the news, with Nvidia closing Wednesday’s session up more than 4% and Oracle rising nearly 7%.
However, there have been questions raised around the funding of the project, with Tesla CEO Elon Musk casting his doubts about this on social media platform X on Wednesday.
