Apple Inc. rose to a record after the company said orders for the iPhone 5 from its online store won’t be shipped for two weeks, fueling speculation the new model has sold out.
The shares climbed 1.2 percent to $691.28 at the close in New York, extending gains for the year to 71 percent.
Based on the two-week delivery estimate currently on the company’s website, the iPhone 5 would ship Sept. 28.
When Apple unveiled the latest model iPhone this week, the Cupertino, Calif.-based company said preorders in the U.S. and eight other countries would begin Friday and the product would be available in one week.
“The initial batch is sold out,” said Shaw Wu, an analyst at Sterne Agee & Leach Inc., in an interview. He raised his sales estimate for the quarter ending in September to 26 million units, from 23 million. “We think that could turn out to be conservative.”
Natalie Harrison, a spokeswoman for Apple, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
While previous iPhone models sold out quickly online, “I don’t think it happened quite this fast,” Tavis McCourt, an analyst at Raymond James & Associates, said.
By the afternoon, only Sprint was still promising delivery by Friday. Verizon Wireless said delivery would take two weeks, and AT&T said it would take “14 to 21 business days.”
As many as 58 million units of the iPhone 5 might sell by the end of the year, according the average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. That could generate as much as $36.2 billion in sales for Apple, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The Sept. 21 release date for the iPhone, earlier than last year’s debut, means U.S. carriers will have to pay millions of dollars in subsidies in the third quarter, hurting their bottom lines, Bloomberg reported.
The earlier timetable is prompting analysts to lower quarterly profit projections for Verizon and AT&T, the two biggest U.S. carriers. The companies cover most of the cost of the device, bringing its $600-plus price tag down to $199, in exchange for two-year contracts.
Chris King, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus & Co., downgraded Verizon and AT&T to hold from buy Friday and reduced his third-quarter margin estimate for both carriers by about a percentage point.
