
Dec 28, 2021 07:44AM ET
By: AnalysisWatch
Apple shares were trading 0.4% higher in premarket trading on Tuesday as traders ignored the company's recent shop closures in the wake of a rampant omicron COVID-19 variant.
The iPhone maker has closed at least 16 shops in New York City, including some larger ones-Fifth Avenue, SoHo, Grand Central, and World Trade Center-because of rising COVID-19 cases, according to Bloomberg. In a small innovation for its New York customers, the company is offering customers the option to place orders online and pick them up at its shops.
The company had already temporarily closed its Carnegie Library branch in Washington, as well as branches in Ohio, Texas, Georgia, and Florida. Earlier this month, CEO Tim Cook told employees in a memo that the company would delay the return-to-work date from February 1 to a "date to be determined."
According to the New York Times, the seven-day average of new cases occurring daily in the US climbed above 214,000 on Sunday, an 83% increase in the last 14 days. In many cases, Omicron is now the dominant variant of the virus in many cases, spreading at least twice as fast as Delta.
The market has been expecting Apple's shares to rise to $182.86, a price that would give the world's highest-valued listed company a market capitalization of $3 trillion.
The stock closed 2.3% higher at $180.33 on Monday. On December 13, the stock hit its previous high of $182.13, giving it a market capitalization of $2.98 trillion. It was only four years ago that the company became the world's first trillion-dollar company.
Several brokerages recently upgraded the stock. BofA analysts Wamsi Mohan and Samik Chatterjee of JPMorgan see the stock at $210. Amit Daryanani of Evercore has a $200 price target on the stock.
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