Apple shares pass $500 for first time

Shares of Apple rallied above $500 for the first time after a two-week gain spurred by the iPhone maker’s first-quarter earnings report neared 20%.

The company increased 1.5% to $500.60 at 10am in New York yesterday.

Timothy Ghriskey, who owns Apple shares and who oversees $2 billion as chief investment officer of Solaris Group LLC in Bedford Hills, New York, said: “It reminds us all of the amazing transformation of Apple over the past eight years. We think the stock has higher to go, $600 is next.

“It’s still an inexpensive stock for a company that is executing at the very highest level and continues to innovate,” he said.

Apple has climbed 11 of the 14 days since reporting quarterly results. Its earnings are expanding so fast that even with the rally, the shares are trading at less than half their median valuation since 1990, Bloomberg data show. The gain since Apple reported results is almost four times as large as the advance in the Nasdaq 100 Index.

The world’s largest company by market capitalisation said on January 24 that profit in the quarter ended December 31 was $13.1bn, 36% more than the average analyst projection, while revenue beat forecasts by $7.3bn, the most ever.

The company single- handedly erased a drop in S&P 500 earnings for the October-to-December period, turning a 4.2% decline into a 4.4% gain.

Apple employs as many as 3,000 people in Ireland.

Shares of the maker of the iPod, iPhone and iPad have risen 17% over the past month.