Cantor Fitzgerald's Brian White Explains Raising Apple's PT To $180

Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Brian White recently upped his target on Apple Inc. AAPL to $180. White was on CNBC Tuesday to explain the reasons behind this raise.

Three Reasons

"Think about the concerns a couple of years ago, ‘oh! Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs', ‘Samsung is going to destroy Apple', ‘why doesn't Apple distribute more cash to shareholders?', ‘oh! They are not innovating'," White said. "All those things are slowly coming off the table and I think what we have seen over the past let's say 60 weeks."

"Number one, we got more details on Apple Watch. So, this is a first new category in 5 years. Number two, Apple Car, Apple TV articles out there. Number three, China put up the FDD-LTE licenses were [given out], so bigger 4G build-up this year."
He continued, "And we know the iPhone is just killing it around the world and doing very well in China. So, I think and we also have [a cash] probably distributed [more] on April. So, I think for all of these reasons does it deserve to trade at such a discount to the S&P, I don't think so."

Fair Value

White was asked what should be the fair value for a company the size of Apple. He replied, "So, when I think of Apple, I am looking at calendar 16, I am looking ex the cash and it's about 10.5 times. The S&P itself is 16 times. So, all we did, we took the S&P multiple put it on Apple's earnings and added back the big cash."