Shares in Apple Inc. gained more than 3% Tuesday after the company announced that CEO Steve Jobs would be involved in a keynote address during the company’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) in June. Investors also seemed cheered by the fact that Apple confirmed that it was working on a cloud service called iCloud.
Apple announced Tuesday morning that Steve Jobs “and a team of Apple executives” would deliver the keynote address at this year’s WWDC, and that the event would focus on Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion,” iOS 5, and “iCloud.” Not only was this the first official confirmation that that much-rumored iCloud is real, it’s the first confirmation that Steve Jobs is feeling good enough to be involved in a keynote address.
Mr. Jobs is technically on an indefinite medical leave of absence while he battles health issues. Because of this, his health is considered an “overhang,” a term for things that could negatively affect a stock’s value in the future, for Apple’s stock.
Accordingly, the news that he will be on-hand for the keynote was seen as good news, and goosed the stock accordingly.
AAPL ended the day at US$347.83, a gain of $10.42 (+3.09%), on strong volume of 14.9 million shares trading hands.
Source: Yahoo! Finance
*In the interest of full disclosure, the author holds a small share in AAPL stock that was not an influence in the creation of this article.