by , 5:30 PM EDT, July 25th, 2007

Apple closed on Wednesday at US$137.26, but shot up more than $9 to $147.04 in after-hours trading once the company announced its third quarter earnings. That financial report revealed that the company shipped 270,000 iPhones and brought in over $5.4 billion in revenue.

The company's stock dropped after AT&T revealed on Tuesday that it had activated 146,000 iPhones during the first two days of availability. Apple's stock stabilized on Wednesday, and then started it's rocket-speed climb after hours when analysts and investors discovered that iPhone sales far exceeded AT&T's contract activation numbers.

Apple is predicting that it will sell 1 million iPhones by September, well ahead of the time frame it took to sell the same number of iPods or Microsoft's Zune media player.

Apple is currently trading after-hours at $147.04, up 9.78 (7.13%).