Steve Jobs is officially the king of Silicon Valley.
The Apple CEO snagged the title yesterday when shares of Apple soared to a new yearly high and helped Apple’s market cap sail past search-engine giant Google for the first time, reaching $179.3 billion, vs. Google’s market cap of $174.3 billion.
The stock run-up came amid a buying frenzy after Jobs pulled off another seemingly improbable feat of posting blockbuster results that even beat Wall Street’s best estimates.
Shares briefly breached the $200-a-share barrier, reaching a high of $201.75, before eventually backing off to close at $198.76, up nearly 5 percent. Trading volume was nearly twice the daily average. For the year, Apple shares are up 133 percent.
The jump was enough to catapult Apple to be among the five largest US companies by market cap, and eclipse firms long seen as bigger.
For example, General Electric, which boasts 323,000 employees, has a market cap of $165.3 billion, while Procter & Gamble, which has 135,000 workers, has a market cap of $169.7 billion. Meanwhile, Apple has just 32,000 employees.
For Jobs, who just returned to work this summer after a six-month break to recover from a liver transplant, yesterday’s stock jump helped him earn a quick paper profit of $49 million on his Apple shares, which now are worth $1.1 billion.
Since his return to work four months ago to lead Apple following his miraculous transplant, the 54-year-old Jobs has gained $313 million on his stock.
Investors were also buoyed by several product developments since Jobs’ return from his illness, largely recovered now with the healthy liver of a 20-something donor.
Besides winning new sales of iPhones due to Jobs’ steep price-cutting, Apple promises to deliver consumers a new dimension of services with its new e-reader dubbed “Tablet.” It could include several online applications combined on the Tablet’s screen, and is due sometime next year for eager and loyal Apple aficionados.
“The solid performance at Apple is driven more by company-specific factors,” said JPMorgan analyst Mark Moskowitz. “The goodness exhibited at Apple should not be applied to other [information technology] hardware players.”
Meanwhile, for the holiday season, Apple yesterday unveiled its larger-screen, desktop iMac computers. The glass and aluminum-clad units start at $1,199 with a 21.5-inch wide-screen LED display. The iMac computers account for 40 percent of the company revenue.
Apple’s iPhone is also cutting into the corporate turf of BlackBerry devices from Research In Motion. Apple said iPhones are either being deployed or piloted in more than 50 percent of the Fortune 100 companies in the US and about half of the Financial Times 100 in Europe.