Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Calls of Note Part 1

- Piper Jaffray comments on Apple Computer (NASDAQ:AAPL) saying that based on their
conversations with Adobe creative professionals, they believe the upcoming release of CS3, which will be the first version of Adobe's Creative Suite that is optimized for Intel-based Macs, will be a catalyst for new Mac sales. Specifically, the firm recently spoke with 50 Adobe customers and found that 24% expect to buy a new Mac within 2 quarters of the release of Adobe's CS3. CS3 is expected to be released in April 2007. Current versions of Adobe's creative products, such as Creative Suite, Photoshop, etc., do not run at full efficiency on Intel-based Macs. The bottom line is that there is significant pent-up demand for Intel-based Macs among the Adobe creative pro community. Adobe creative pro customers cannot run their Adobe apps at full efficiency on an Intel-based Mac until CS3 is released, so many are waiting until that time to upgrade their machines.

If these customers upgrade to a new Mac within the first 2 quarters following CS3 release (Jun-07 & Sep-07 quarters), one can expect 288k Macs sold to Adobe creative pros in each of those 2 quarters. That would be 138k more Macs per quarter than the firm had been anticipating, as they had been using an estimate of 150k Macs per quarter to Adobe creative pros. 138k more Macs sold to Adobe customers per quarter would add 7% ($0.04) to their EPS estimate in both the Jun-07 and Sep-07 quarters.

Reits Outpeform and $99 tgt.

Notablecalls: So, PJ is calling for an $0.08 upside in their EPS. The stock is trading around 25x FY07 consensus EPS implying $2 upside in price. At least that's how it should work theoretically. IN reality, I do like AAPL's chart here and I think there may be some buy interest today. Would keep it on a tight leash and would definitely not chase any gaps up.

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