By Barry Eitel
SAN FRANCISCO
Shares of Apple rallied more than 7 percent in Wednesday afternoon trading.
After a victorious earnings call Tuesday, Apple is enjoying a near record-breaking jump on Wall Street.
At one point in the day, the stock touched just above $118 a share, putting it in range of Apple’s all-time high of almost $120.
With last quarter's profits, Apple is now worth $650 billion--well beyond halfway to becoming the world's first trillion dollar company.
Speaking on CNBC, activist investor Carl Icahn said that shares were undervalued and that investing in Apple was a “no-brainer.”
In October, Icahn told Apple’s CEO Tim Cook that his models showed Apple could be trading at $203 a share.
After the flourishing numbers announced during the earnings call, Icahn made a bullish prediction that shares could hit even higher.
The California company released its earnings report for the first quarter of this fiscal year, which ended Dec. 27, after the close of markets and showed that powered by the sales of 74.5 million iPhones last quarter, Apple hauled in an astounding $18 billion net profit last quarter – an historic figure.
“Demand for iPhone was staggering,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said during the call. “This volume is hard to comprehend.”
Cook also finally revealed a release timeframe for the company’s new wearable, Apple Watch – the first innovative new product out of Cupertino since the late Steve Jobs, Apple’s enigmatic co-founder, introduced the world to the iPad tablet in 2010.
Cook claimed Apple Watch should start shipping in April. The device was unveiled alongside the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in September, with Apple claiming at the time the product would launch in early 2015.
Production of the smartwatch is apparently “right on schedule,” Cook told investors, adding that he is “using it every day and love it and can’t live without it.”
