We recently published a list of 9 Buzzing AI Stocks to Watch on Latest News. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) stands against other buzzing AI stocks to watch on latest news.
Doug Clinton, Intelligent Alpha founder, talked recently about the issue of scaling in AI on CNBC and said that in the past the improvement of AI models was surging based on the data inputs. However, Clinton referred to the recent reports of AI models hitting a plateau in performance. He believes this issue will be important for AI investors in the coming months and years.
“Just to give the quick 101: Over the last few years, what we’ve seen in AI model development is that the more data you put into these models and the more compute you use to train them, the better the models get—very predictable. However, recent reports from OpenAI and Google show that the latest models they’ve trained haven’t been as good as expected based on scaling laws. This has sparked debate in Silicon Valley. Even Sam Altman tweeted about it last week, saying, “There is no wall,” so maybe it’s not an issue—we’ll see. But I think Jensen really needs to address that question because the 18 to 24-month picture hinges on whether these companies will need to invest in something beyond just compute.”
However, the analyst is bullish on the broader AI market in the long term and believes companies are just getting started in this bull market.
“I think if you take a longer-term view—2 to 4 years—we’re still very confident we’ll be in an AI bull market. That doesn’t mean there won’t be pullbacks here and there, but I think we have a long way to go. Companies are really just starting to adopt AI, and we’ll begin to see those revenues over the next year and beyond.”
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For this article we picked 10 AI stocks trending on latest news and analyst ratings. With each stock we have mentioned the number of hedge fund investors. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).
A wide view of an Apple store, showing the range of products the company offers.
Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 184
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) could face a reduction in its prized gross margins if President-elect Trump imposes tariffs on Chinese imports, according to research firm Jefferies. However, there remain many uncertainties at this stage, the firm said.
Analyst Edison Lee, who holds a “Hold” rating on Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), noted that the company was exempt from import tariffs during Trump’s first term from 2016 to 2020. Since then, Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) has taken steps to diversify its production outside of China, such as shifting some manufacturing to India. Despite these efforts, only about 10% of iPhones are produced outside of China. While it’s possible that Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) could secure another exemption, Lee suggested that if it doesn’t, the impact on gross margins could be significant.
“[Our] analysis indicates AAPL’s [gross margins] could potentially be impacted by 3.0-6.7ppt, and our DCF value by ~5% to 10%, assuming no ASP/vol change,” Lee wrote in a note to clients.
Polen Focus Growth Strategy stated the following regarding Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in its Q3 2024 investor letter:
The largest relative detractors during the quarter were Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Airbnb, and Tesla (not owned). We added a new position in Apple during the period, which we discuss further in the following section. While Apple is a roughly average-sized position in Focus Growth, it is the largest holding in the Russell 1000 Growth Index, at over 12%, and the stock’s outperformance in the quarter weighed on relative results.
In the third quarter, we purchased new positions in Apple. We owned Apple from early 2009 through late 2016, a period characterized by the massive iPhone-driven growth phase propelling the company’s revenue and earnings to levels almost unseen previously. We moved on from the position in 2016 as we felt Apple had nearly fully penetrated the high end of the smartphone market, which by and large proved correct. Revenue growth has since compounded in the mid-to-high single digits, with earnings growth modestly higher, driven by heavy share buybacks. In the last two years, the company’s revenue and earnings growth has slowed to essentially 0%.
Apple can now upgrade Siri to the true helpful digital assistance consumers hoped it would be all along. Not to mention, the new operating system brings useful new features to not only Apple apps and services but also seamlessly across third-party apps. We believe this means a multi-year upgrade cycle is coming for iPhones that will be unveiled later in 2024 and into 2025. The elongation of the iPhone replacement cycle over the last few years is likely to stop or even reverse, pulling forward stronger revenue, earnings, and free cashflow growth for Apple over the next few years. We expect this to not only accelerate iPhone volume growth but also likely a product mix shifting to higher-priced, higher-margin iPhones. We also expect the AI functionality to be more impactful with bigger screens, processing, and memory. With consumer budgets getting tighter, we feel the new Apple phones with GenAI functionality will become a top priority for consumers versus other areas of spend, which we expect could give a safety-like quality to the acceleration. While the company’s valuation at just under 30x forward earnings is not cheap, we feel the earnings acceleration will allow Apple to generate at least double-digit returns (possibly even mid-teens) over the next few years, earning its place in our Focus Growth Portfolio.”
Overall, AAPL ranks 4th on our list of buzzing AI stocks to watch on latest news. While we acknowledge the potential of AAPL, our conviction lies in the belief that under the radar AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than AAPL but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.