Palm stock smashes through $14 barrier, company now worth over $2 billion 7

By the close of trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday, PALM had reached a new 52-week high of $14.58/share, an increase of 8.56% over the previous day’s close. The rocketing share price also drove up the value of Palm as a company, with 137,840,000 outstanding shares, giving it a market cap (number of shares X price of shares) of $2.009 billion.

This is a huge recovery for Palm stock, reaching a price not seen since Palm paid a $9 dividend on October 27, 2007 as a result of Elevation Partner’s investment agreement in June of that year (when a stock dividend is paid, the value of the dividend is subtracted from the price of the shares). If we take the dividend into account, Palm hasn’t seen an equivalent stock price since April 2006.

From the December 5, 2008, low of $1.14/share, Palm has jumped more than 1200%. It was less than two months ago that Merrill Lynch analyst Vivek Arya upgraded Palm from hold to buy, with a target price of $14. And it was just December that analysts were so disapproving of Palm that they were giving the stock a target price of $0 (yes, zero dollars).

What a difference six months makes.