Priceline became the first company listed in the S&P 500 to trade at $1,000 in the index’s 56-year history.

September 20, 2013 Leave a comment

September 18, 2013, 7:24 p.m. ET

Priceline’s Share Price Crosses $1,000 Mark

BEN FOX RUBIN

Priceline.com Inc., PCLN +2.56% the online travel agent, on Wednesday became the first company listed in the S&P 500 to trade at $1,000 in the index’s 56-year history. The company reached a high of $1,001, before settling at $995.09, up 2.6%. It’s up 60% so far this year. Its previous intraday high was $994.98, reached last month after Priceline’s better-than-expected earnings report.Priceline’s shares have flirted with $1,000 before. During the dot-com bubble, it topped out split-adjusted closing high of $974.25 in April 1999. The stock had a meltdown in the years that followed, closing below $7 a share in October 2002.

Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said Priceline’s milestone represents the market’s overall rise, as “the average price of stocks have continued to go up.”

As of Wednesday, 136 S&P 500 issues closed above $75 a share, up from 92 at the end of 2012 and 48 in 2003, he said. The average price for S&P 500 stocks is at $71 a share, up from $58.73 at the end of 2012 and $43.45 in 2003.

Mr. Silverblatt said Priceline was a stronger candidate than others to hit $1,000, since newer firms tend to be more comfortable with higher stock prices and don’t see the need to split their shares as often. He noted that some companies that made a lot of splits decades ago probably could have hit $1,000 sooner.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at a record, up 1% at 15677. The S&P 500 index also notched a record, closing up 1.2% at 1726. The Nasdaq Composite Index rose 1% to 3784.

Filed under TMT Trends

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