Apple stock is tumbling again after Jefferies fired another shot. Analyst Edison Lee lowered his target to $203.07, down from $205.16, and kept his underperform rating locked in.
That new price target suggests Apple stock could fall a full 17% from Monday’s open at around $246. Edison said there’s simply “more downside than upside” for Apple. Even though the stock is only down 2% for the year, Edison says its valuation still looks “unattractive” at this level.
Edison also pointed to tariffs as a serious risk that people are brushing off. In his words, tariffs could “come back to haunt AAPL.” He highlighted the uncertainty around the U.S.-India and U.S.-China trade deals and warned that Apple’s tariff-exempt status might not last.
“As Trump has just slapped an additional 100% (now 30%) tariff on Chinese imports, whether smartphone imports from China would stay exempt is unclear,” he said.
Jefferies warns on iPhone 17 and tariff trouble
Edison also threw cold water on Apple’s iPhone 17 supply plans. He said China likely won’t be able to cover all of Apple’s U.S. demand just using India-based production. That could open the door for more pressure from Washington, especially if the U.S.-China tensions keep getting worse.
If things spiral, the company might be pushed to build more phones on U.S. soil, which would drive up costs even more. It’s not just about where the phones are made, either.
Edison warned that the iPhone 17’s margin might take a hit from rising production costs and an unfavorable product mix. He said the phone’s sales momentum has already slowed. Earlier this month, Edison had already downgraded Apple to underperform, saying the market had “overly lofty expectations” for its next phone cycle.
While investors are sweating over supply chains and pricing power, Apple’s legal department has its own crisis to manage. The company is now being sued by neuroscientists Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen Macknik, who claim Apple used pirated books to train its brand-new Apple Intelligence system.
The lawsuit, filed October 9 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accuses Apple of pulling books from “shadow libraries” without asking for permission.
The researchers say Apple accessed thousands of copyrighted works, including books they wrote. They also claim Apple’s market cap jumped by over $200 billion after the AI launch, value they say was built on stolen content.
This isn’t Apple’s first copyright problem either. Back in September, a group of authors also sued the company over AI training data. Other tech giants like Meta and Anthropic have also been dragged into similar legal fights, but so far they’ve had better luck in court thanks to the “fair use” doctrine.
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