Goldman Sachs says it's time to pick an Apple

It was a good time to jump into shares of technology giant Apple, following weakness in the share price and before the company’s sales re-accelerated over the remainder of the year, analysts at Goldman Sachs believed.

The broker expected Apple to lower its sales guidance for the second quarter of the fiscal year, when it published results on 26 January.

However, in the opinion of analysts Simona Jankowski, Matthew Cabral, Balaji Krishnamurthy, and Swapnil Sheth the stock price had already discounted that.

In their opinion, the underperformance in the company’s shares thus far in 2016 only added to the rationale for buying the stock.

Furthermore, Goldman Sachs said the shares were ‘defensive’ relative to the market in the current sell-off and should increasingly reflect the company’s transition to ‘Apple-as-a-service’.

Users were expected to shift towards iPhone instalment plans and adopt new products and services in the Apple ecosystem, such as Apple TV, Music, Pay, Watch, etc. -making the 500mn iPhone installed base stickier.

Goldman Sachs reiterated its ‘buy’ recommendation and 155p target price for the stock.