SHARES IN technology group Apple, getting a boost from anticipation of the new iPad, passed $600 yesterday for the first time.
The shares gained as much as 1.8 per cent to $600.01, before retreating to $592.8 in morning trade in New York and giving the company a market valuation of about $552 billion.
Apple will start selling a new iPad tablet today and cut the price of the previous version, helping widen its lead over competitors.
At least five analysts raised their share price estimates for the stock this week, citing the iPad’s dominance over products from Amazon, Microsoft and Google as well as growing sales in China and Brazil.
As of yesterday, Apple gave investors a 555 per cent return in the past five years and had outperformed the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index by 543 per cent.
Since 2007, investors paid an average 43 per cent premium for Apple’s earnings compared with the S&P 500’s earnings. The premium yesterday was about 16 per cent.
Apple in February became the sixth US stock to top $500 billion in market value, a significant move for a company whose stock traded at $10 a decade ago. None of the others, which include Exxon Mobil and Microsoft, were able to sustain that market value over time. – (Bloomberg)
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