(Associated Press via NewsEdge) Google's stock price surged to a nine-month high reflecting Wall Street's deepening admiration of the Internet search leader as it continues to make extraordinary growth look routine.
The Mountain View-based company's shares climbed as high as $460.10 before falling back slightly to close at $459.67, an increase of $33.61, or 7.9%, on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The run-up created more than $10 billion in shareholder wealth and left Google's market value at $143 billion after eight years in business.
By comparison, 67-year-old HP, the world's largest technology company, has a market value of $108 billion.
Google's stock hasn't been this expensive since the first half of January when the price reached its all-time high of $475.11.
Most industry analysts expect Google to smash through that barrier soon, estimating the shares' value at anywhere between $500 and $600.
Those lofty price targets look more realistic after Google's third-quarter profit nearly doubled to $733 million, surprising even the most bullish analysts. Through the first nine months of the year, Google earned $2 billion on revenue of $7.4 billion.
The performance illustrates the substantial advantage that Google has built over its chief rivals, Yahoo and Microsoft, in the rapidly growing online advertising market.
Google's robust third-quarter growth, generated in the typically sluggish summer season, bodes well for the upcoming holiday shopping season when ad spending peaks. And if recently declining gasoline prices should fall even further, Google could profit even more as advertisers step up their pursuit of the extra money in consumers' wallets.
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