Shares of Apple Inc. rose 2% in premarket trade Tuesday despite PiperJaffray analyst Gene Munster, among Wall Street’s most bullish analysts on Apple with a $179 stock price target, lowering his iPhone unit estimates for the second quarter, which ends in March. Munster still expects the company to deliver a better-than-feared outlook for the second quarter, since expectations are already so low. He believes shares will reset as long as the company delivers a guidance on iPhone unit sales of at least 45 million, which would only be slightly higher than the 44 million it reported in the year-earlier period, and sharply below the 56 million analysts on average are expecting, according to FactSet. A number of analysts have reeled in iPhone unit estimates in recent weeks, yet the average rating on the stock remains the equivalent to buy, while the average 12-month price target sits at $140.55, which represents a 43% increase from Monday’s closing price. Shares of Apple have fallen 12% over the last three months.
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