Apple hits new highs on smartphone hopes

Apple gave its British investors a lucrative start to Valentine’s Day.

Shares in the computer giant hit a record high on red-hot expectations for its new iPhone.

The US firm’s stock closed up nearly 1% to $133.29 a share, valuing it the business at about $699 billion (£561 billion) and surpassing Apple’s previous record closing high price of $133 set in February 2015.

The surge came as Goldman Sachs analysts raised their Apple price target over hopes for its new iPhone’s 3-D sensing technology while bankers at Swiss giant UBS published a note claiming that Apple’s services business was “undervalued.”

Apple is also expected to benefit from the Trump administration’s tax policies on foreign cash repatriation.

Changes to the latest iPhone 7 weren’t radical enough to attract swathes of customers to upgrade, but the next iPhone, which is due later this year, is set to be a more substantial update, analysts reckon.