If you hear talk of slowing growth for the App Store, Evercore analyst Amit Daryanani says don’t worry about it. It’s not that that talk is incorrect, it just shouldn’t be a source of worry in his estimation.
Apple 3.0 ran part of a note he wrote, wherein he offered reasons to not fret. First - you’re looking at seriously tough compares. “The growth slowdown has been occurring for the past five months,” wrote the analyst, “as we lap an extended period of 30%+ growth.” Plus, there’s other stuff besides the App Store, and comparisons get easier the further on we go. Quoting his note again:
Apple’s ability to grow Services revenue well in excess of App Store growth is encouraging as we will likely see at least two more months of single digit App Store growth. Consensus [for Services] is currently forecasting ~17%, which looks achievable even with App Store growth likely to remain in the single digits. Comps get easier starting in April, so we expect a return to double digit growth at that time…
Daryanani has an “Outperform” rating on Apple shares. His price target on the shares is $210.
