AAPL: Susquehanna Sees iPhone Upside, ‘iPad 3′ Underway

Susquehanna Financial Group’s Jeffrey Fidacaro today joined the chorus of analysts trying to predict what the introduction of Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone 4S may mean for the company’s results last quarter and this quarter, which Apple is expected to announce on October 18th.

“Preliminary iPhone orders for fiscal Q1 2012 [are] showing strong sequential improvement,” writes Fidicaro.

Fidicaro is modeling iPhone units to rise slightly to 21.5 million in Apple’s fiscal Q4 ended last month, and he thinks record pre-orders of 1 million units in the first 24 hours of availability for the iPhone 4S point to 27.1 million units in Q4. Fidicaro thinks total “builds” of the iPhone, across all models, separate from the actual shipments, may be in a range of 32 million to 36 million this quarter.

For the iPad, Fidicaro thinks Apple shipped 11.5 million units last quarter, and will probably reach 13 million this quarter.

Fidicaro also makes reference to a note from his semiconductor colleague, Christopher Caso, also published today, addressing the iPad.

Caso takes on the multiple reports of cuts in iPad production that came from competing analysts two weeks ago. He thinks they’re wrong. Apple “pulled in” some iPad production into Q3 in order to get ready for the holidays, and also to clear the decks for what he thinks is the imminent arrival of an “iPad 3″:

We believe AAPL pulled production forward to ensure sufficient availability of iPad during the holidays, and such a move is consistent with a production decline in advance of the new model launch (we believe iPad 3 starts production in 4Q, as noted below). Thus, we believe that recent competitor reports, which only noted the 4Q production volumes two weeks ago, were misinformed. iPad 3 appears on the forecast for 4Q production start. Our checks indicate that iPad 3 has now shown up on AAPL’s production forecast for a late-4Q production start. We believe 0.6 mln-1 mln units are forecasted for 4Q production.

Fidicaro maintains a “Positive” rating on Apple shares and a $535 price target.

Apple shares today closed up $6.24, or 1.6%, at $408.43.