Loop Capital Downgrades Apple, Says 13 Million Cut iPhones Won’t Come Back

Loop Capital Downgrades Apple, Says 13 Million Cut iPhones Won’t Come Back
| The Desk Media Staff
#Apple

Loop Capital has downgraded Apple to Hold from Buy and cut its price target to $330 from $370, saying the roughly 13 million iPhone shipments Apple cut from its second-half 2026 plans aren’t coming back, Investing.com reported Tuesday. CNBC and MacRumors also covered the note.

Why Loop changed its mind

Analyst Ananda Baruah said Apple had trimmed September- and December-quarter iPhone shipments by about 10%. Loop had assumed most of those units would be made up through 2027 because the cuts stemmed from memory and processor supply, not demand. “This no longer appears to be the case,” Baruah wrote, according to Investing.com, citing the firm’s latest supply chain checks.

Loop now models 79 million iPhones in the December quarter, below the Street’s 85 million, and cut its average selling price estimate to $1,123 from $1,239. For 2027 it actually raised its unit forecast to 260 million, but lowered its selling price estimate to $1,096 from $1,235, trimming its iPhone revenue forecast to $285 billion from $315 billion. The firm lowered its normalized earnings estimate to $11 a share from $12 and flagged gross margin risk as memory costs keep rising. With Apple trading at 36 times earnings, a five-year high by Loop’s count, it said the stock needs a “fundamental catalyst reset,” while still viewing Apple’s longer-term share gains and Services business positively.

The split launch muddies the math

Apple’s staggered lineup makes this year’s shipment numbers harder to read. The iPhone 18 Pro models arrived in September and the iPhone Duo launches October 23, but the standard iPhone 18 isn’t expected until spring 2027, MacRumors notes. Counterpoint Research attributed much of Apple’s third-quarter shipment decline to that missing model, while still crediting Apple with a record 22% share of global shipments.

Other analysts see softness too. Jefferies’ Edison Lee found China delivery lead times for the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max had fallen to zero, versus six and 25 days for the iPhone 17 Pro models at the same point last year, and said Apple may have cut orders for components including 2-nanometer chips by 10 to 15 percent, Yahoo Finance reports.

These are analyst forecasts, not Apple guidance, and Apple has not commented on the note.

Sources: Investing.com, Investing.com via Yahoo Finance, CNBC, MacRumors, Yahoo Finance