Evercore ISI has reaffirmed its bullish stance on Apple (AAPL), reiterating a Buy rating and a $250 price target for the tech giant. The firm cites "another good month" for Apple as the basis for its outlook.

However, Wall Street analysts are closely monitoring whether Apple's artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives, unveiled at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), will be enough to drive growth in upcoming quarters.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Catalysts.

This post was written by Angel Smith

Video Transcript

We're also looking at Apple this morning because we're always looking at Apple evercore.

I si reiterating their buy rating and a $250 price target on the stock firm saying the company had another good month for the iphone.

We're taking a look at shares up by about 1.5% right now.

Um ok, so another good month for Apple, I think it's gonna be a larger question though of how many people are waiting to get into the new iphone because of the promises that they were making at WW DC is generative A I enough of a demand generation driver for Apple.

In the next inflection.

This data is pretty um pretty compelling ship my data up uh in May according to evercore I si 40% year over year coming off a growth rate of 52% in April.

That's good.

Uh Suggesting that this acceleration is easing concerns about uh Apple's position in China.

I mean, China has been a just a weak spot for Apple at least for the past several quarters.

You know, I was reading this note and I was thinking about another note, we saw from Mike Cantor on Wednesday, but he doesn't want to talk about the SNP anymore.

And because the SNP is all A I.

Right.

And I'm reading this note and then like, ok, we wanna do the A I iphone upgrade Supercycle, but go back in time a few months, the story was Apple is not playing in A I to the stock is lagging and you sort of wonder if we start to sour on the A I theme even a little bit in the second half of this year.

Wouldn't it be great for Apple to just go back to talking about regular iphone sales in China in its biggest growth market.

And they don't have to worry about A I, they make a ton of money, they pay a dividend, they buy back a ton of stock.

It's a safe place as an investor to say, hey, we're overweight.

Apple.

It was not very fun to say that a few months ago because there again was not quote unquote an A I play that story.

Obviously, we've seen the stock chart, you know, since late April has really turned around, but being a more conservative entrant within that field and just getting back to the basics of selling a lot of people, a lot of iphones and a lot of services related to the io system, maybe that's the best play for Apple, who, who we'd argue with Warren Buffett.

I mean, Time Hauler and Apple guy knows a thing or two.

Well, somebody else executed the trade and he probably just had to sign off on it.

But, you know, at the end of the day for Apple, if you go back in the annals of history, they're never going to be kind of over the past two decades instances where you look at Apple and say they were a first mover in putting technological innovation out there, they see what the market demand program file looks like.

They get a sense of what the fair pricing that consumers who have already bought into their ecosystem would be comfortable with.

And then maybe say, well, over time, we might be able to charge a little bit more, but they've never been, especially under Tim Cook, never been the one to say, OK, we're gonna be first in mp3 players or at least that was back when he was CEO um or CEO O excuse me.

Um We're not gonna be the first ones to be, you know, fully uh touch screen phone even under jobs.

At that point.

There were other instances of innovation where companies beat them to that.

And generative A I is another instance where they're being extremely calculated and I think that's where we didn't hear from them for months, almost a year essentially on the generative A I front so that they could be conservative to your point, but calculated as well.

Yeah, I mean, and you go all the way back to the jobs report today.

If the economy is entering a different phase and markets are entering a different phase, isn't it better for you to have a better core business to talk about?

Rather than to say our story is playing in the next gen of tech because rates are high uh the situation for your core customer base, regardless of what business you're in is gonna be changing isn't just better for Apple to say we all got our Macs on the table and our iphones on the table.

Julie Sue says the job is John Mark's gonna say hot.

So she's good.

Well, we'll see, you know, we'll see.

All right.