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HSBC flips Apple to Buy, betting agentic Siri wins without hyperscaler capex

As IBM's 25% crash exposes AI's toll on software budgets, HSBC's Cote-Colisson raises Apple's target 41% to $366.

By Iris Holloway · Tools & frameworks ·

HSBC upgraded Apple from Hold to Buy on Friday, lifting its price target 41% to $366 from $260 and framing the company as the rare mega-cap that can ride the agentic-AI wave without underwriting it. Analyst Nicolas Cote-Colisson called Apple “at an operational turning point” and argued it “can stay away from the (too) high capex debate” by riding a 2.5 billion installed device base into a revamped Apple Intelligence and an agentic Siri that runs foundation models on-device.

The timing is pointed. Four days earlier, IBM shares dropped 25% on Tuesday, its worst single-day print on record, deeper than Black Monday 1987. Preliminary Q2 revenue landed at $17.2 billion against a FactSet consensus of $17.86 billion, with adjusted EPS of $2.93 versus $3.01. Microsoft, ServiceNow, Salesforce, and Intuit slid 2% to 5% in sympathy. In an investor letter cited by Reuters, CEO Arvind Krishna said clients in the last few weeks of June shifted quarterly capex toward “servers, storage, and memory purchases to secure supply-constrained infrastructure ahead of expected price increases.”

That’s the tell. Software budgets are being cannibalized by GPU procurement. The AI trade is eating its own middle layer.

Cote-Colisson’s Apple thesis reads directly against that dynamic. HSBC lifted 2027–28 revenue forecasts 7% to 9% and iPhone estimates 11% to 13%, modeling roughly 21% iPhone unit growth in 2026 and 11.6% in 2027, with a foldable iPhone expected in September. The bet is that Apple monetizes agentic AI through hardware refresh rather than by joining the hyperscaler arms race.

Elite psychology is shifting in the same direction. On July 2, Mark Zuckerberg told Meta staff that agent progress hadn’t “accelerated in the way” executives expected. When the loudest AI maximalist concedes the timeline is slipping, the analyst preferring the company with no capex exposure looks less contrarian than early.

Sources