Bank of America boosts price target on Apple as court decision entrenches status quo of tens of billions of revenues from Google

Wall Street has lavished most of its attention lauding how much of an overhang has been removed from Google’s stock after the monopoly case against it ended with the search giant’s operating environment more or less unchanged.

But the enduring persistence of the status quo is also a big boon for Apple, per Bank of America.

In short: Apple will keep getting loads of money from Google (currently about $20 billion per year) to preload its products as the default setting on iPhones. Higher visibility into that Services revenue means Apple’s valuation should increase, wrote BofA analyst Wamsi Mohan, who upped his price target on the stock to $260 from $250.

“In our opinion, the substance of this remedy already exists today where Apple has Google as the default search engine, but also allows users to change that default to some other search engine in settings,” Mohan wrote.

Shares of Apple rose to about a six-month high this morning in the wake of Tuesday’s court decision, up 2.5% as of 10:00 a.m. ET.