FAANG Report: Apple bull on Wall Street sets $310 price target; Google app licenses in EU to cost $40/phone

A new biggest bull for Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) initiated coverage of the iPhone maker, a report on CNBC said.

Longtime technology analyst Daniel Ives, who had just moved to Wedbush Securities from GBH Insights, gave Apple an Outperform rating and a 12-month price target of $310, higher than any other analyst on Wall Street.

“With positively trending average selling prices that we believe can approach about $800 in fiscal 2019 and healthy gross margins heading into this 2019 product cycle that are showing no signs of abating … we believe many of the growth fears on the Street have been alleviated around Apple in the near term,” Ives said in a note to clients. 

Ives said he would not be surprised to see 350 million units upgraded during the next 12 to 18 months. Consensus estimates model iPhone shipments of about 220 million units, a projection he deemed potentially “conservative.” Ives also added the security to Wedbush’s “best ideas” list. 

Apple shares went up by 0.9% to $217.97.

Dan Ives talks tech from CNBC.

Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) has made additional visits to some of the 20 cities that are finalists for its second headquarters, stoking more speculation on who the eventual winner would be, a report by USA Today said. 

Officials of the retail giant have visited New York, Newark, New Jersey and Chicago and then followed up with visits to other potential sites such as Miami and locations in the Washington, DC area.

The company has said it would invest $5 billion and hire as many as 50,000 employees in the winning city. Amazon, whose current headquarters in Seattle is estimated to have about 40,000 employees, is in search of more space and access to a wide pool of tech talent. 

A decision will be made before the end of the year.

Amazon shares slipped 0.36% to $1,764.06.

READ: Amazon looking to hire 100,000 seasonal workers for Christmas shopping season, says report

Buyers of political ads are exploiting loopholes in Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) to remain relatively anonymous, a report by CNBC said.

The act of obscuring political ad funding is nothing new. Political action committees, commonly known as PACs, are allowed to collect money outside of a particular campaign and spend it on ads of many kinds, including TV, radio, direct mail and digital. But regulation around political ads online remains ambiguous, it said.

The Federal Election Commission proposed two sets of rules last March that would regulate the disclosure of campaign financing on websites and apps as well as how disclaimers would appear in small digital ads.

But it now seems like the rules would be unlikely to come into effect before the US midterm elections in November.

Facebook shares eased 0.34% to $154.39.

The app licenses for the android phones of Alphabet Inc’s Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) will cost up to $40/phone in the European Union, a report by Android Central said.   

That $40 per phone fee apparently applies to devices that have a pixel density on the display of 501ppi (pixels per inch) or greater. 

In addition to the new fees, companies that choose to not install Chrome and Search on their phones won’t receive any revenue that comes from Google searches on the company’s browser, the report said.

The new rules are set to go into effect for any devices that are activated either on or after February 1, 2019.

Google stock edged up 0.07% to $1,088.68.

FAANG Report: Facebook accused of misleading brands; Google to charge fees in Europe 

Executives of streaming giant Netflix Inc (NASDAQ:NFLX) are telling employees to brace for an in-depth report by a publication that takes a critical view of the company’s corporate culture, NBC News said in a report.

Such an article threatens to sap morale at a company that has been widely portrayed as the envy of the media industry, given the lucrative six- and seven-figure salaries it offers to employees, to say nothing of the hundreds of millions it offers to showrunners, the report said.

The investigation could also be a setback for Netflix just days after its strong third-quarter earnings report, which showed the company had added 7 million subscribers and was on track to add another 7.6 million in the months ahead.

Netflix shares declined 1.8% to $340.40.

Reporting by Rene Pastor, contactable on [email protected]

Story by ProactiveInvestors