By Rex Crum, MarketWatch Piper Jaffray raises price target as
iPhone 6 supplies improve
NEW YORK (MarketWatch)--Tech stocks shook off early doldrums
Thursday, with Apple Inc. among the sector leaders gaining ground
after Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster raised his price target on the
iPhone maker.
Apple (AAPL) shares rose 1.5% to $116.36 after Munster lifted
his price target on the company to $135 a share from $120. Munster
cited improvements in Apple's ability to match supplies of the new
iPhone 6 and iPhone 6+ with consumer demands fas the main reason
for raising his expectations for Apple's stock price to rise.
Among other leading tech stocks, gains came from Yahoo Inc.
(YHOO), Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) and Facebook Inc. (FB).
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) shares rose 16 cents to $48.36, even as
analysts at Morgan Stanley said Thursday that investors might want
to wait for the shares to fall further before investing in the
software giant.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index (RIXF) rose 19 points to
4,695 and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) was also in
positive territory.
While the broader tech sector advanced, there emerged some
notable decliners.
GoPro Inc. (GPRO) fell more than 6% to $74.11 a share. Late
Wednesday, the digital sport-camera maker said it would offer more
than 10 million shares in a secondary stock offering at $75 a
share.
Salesforce.com Inc. (CRM) game up more than 3% to trade at
$59.02 a share after the on-demand software company gave a
disappointing fourth-quarter forecast on Wednesday. Salesforce said
it expects to report a fourth-quarter profit, excluding one-time
items, of 13 cents to 14 cents a share on revenue of about $1.44
billion. Analysts surveyed by FactSet estimate fourth-quarter
earnings of 15 cents a share on revenue of $1.45 billion for the
period ending in January.
Losses also came from Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ), Google Inc.
(GOOGL) and Pandora Media Inc. (P).
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