Is Apple's Same-Day Delivery The End For Apple Stores?

Apple Inc. AAPL is offering same-day delivery in the San Francisco Bay area. This new feature could make customers less likely to visit brick-and-mortar locations, which might make investors wonder: is this the beginning of the end for the Apple Store? "I don't think so," Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry told Benzinga. "Actually. I think there's a market for everything. [The] Apple Store is all about experiencing the product, not necessarily buying at the same time." Tigress Financial Partners analyst Ivan Feinseth had a similar viewpoint. "They're always going to have a physical retail presence," Feinseth told Benzinga, noting that the store was partially created to build Apple's brand. "The Apple Store is more of a place for customer service and to showcase tech and to create a connection to the brand. It's not just an outlet to sell the product. It's so much more." Feinseth believes Apple will always build stores in "key locations," as the company already has.

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Same Store Trap

Sean Udall, CIO of Quantum Trading Strategies and author of The TechStrat Report, doesn't believe this is the beginning of the end for the Apple Store. He said that while Apple CEO Tim Cook's greatest skill set was supply chain efficiency and low inventory, he doesn't expect the company to exit the retail business. "If you look at the success of other retailers or food places, like Chipotle or Ulta Salon, they sort of do well as long as they can keep expanding their footprint and building more and more stores all the time," Udall told Benzinga. "Once they became a same store sales deal, it's a tougher thing." Udall said that it has never been Apple's goal to have "thousands upon thousands of stores" and build new stores every single quarter. "I think they would rather limit the total number of stores," he said. Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Louis Bedigian had no position in the equities mentioned in this report.