6 Stocks Over $500

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 11:47AM EST · Published Mar 18, 10:05AM EDT

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There are six companies in the S&P 500 that have share prices over $500. They do not have anything particularly noteworthy in common. Most are well-known among the American public, however, and some are among the best known brands in the United States. Perhaps coincidentally, several are also among the largest U.S. companies, as measured both by market cap and revenue.

Most investors cannot afford to buy stocks priced over $500, as even a small number of shares would require an investment of thousands of dollars. Any of the companies on this list could easily split their stocks to bring down share prices. Since the controlling shareholders of some of these companies are far more concerned with total value than they are with share price, none of these companies have split their shares recently. Large institutional investors are also among those with stakes in these companies. For these entities able to buy billions worth of stock, the price of a single share is irrelevant.

At least three of the companies on the list are run by their founders: Amazon, Alphabet and Berkshire Hathaway.

Click here to see the 6 stocks over $500.

To identify the six companies with shares over $500, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed stock prices of public S&P 500 companies using FINVIZ, a stock screening service. Share price and market cap figures are from Yahoo! Finance. One-year stock price changes are for the 12 months through March 17, 2016.

These are the six companies with share prices over $500.

1. The Priceline Group Inc.
> Ticker: (NASDAQ: PCLN)
> Industry: Online travel
> Share price: $1,347
> Market cap: 66.9 billion
> One-yr. price chg.: +17%
>Annual revenue: $9.2 billion

Perhaps best known for long-time spokesman William Shatner, Priceline is one of the largest and oldest online travel companies in America, founded in 1997. Priceline had $55 billion in gross bookings in 2015. Among the company’s brands are OpenTable, Bookings.com, Priceline.com and KAYAK.

2. AutoZone Inc.
> Ticker: (NYSE: AZO)
> Industry: Car parts
> Share price: $787
> Market cap: $24 billion
> One-yr. price chg.: +19%
>Annual revenue: $10.2 billion

As its busiest sales season of the year approaches, AutoZone will add over 10,000 full-time and part-time workers to work in some of the company’s more than 5,100 stores across the United States. AutoZone not only operates stores, it also has extensive online catalogs.

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3. Alphabet Inc.
> Ticker: (NASDAQ: GOOGL)
> Industry: Internet
> Share price: $760
> Market cap: $523 billion
> One-yr. price chg.: +36%
>Annual revenue: $75 billion

Formerly known as Google, Alphabet is the parent company of a number of companies, including Google and YouTube. The holding company sells products that range from its self-driving car initiative to its Android operating system. Alphabet continues to get almost all of its revenue from advertising places at Google.com and affiliated online sites.

4. Intuitive Surgical Inc.
> Ticker: (NASDAQ: ISRG)
> Industry: Surgical systems and parts
> Share price: $587
> Market cap: $22 billion
> One-yr. price chg.: +15%
>Annual revenue: $2.38 billion

Intuitive Surgical has several products at the vanguard of the global surgical industry. Among the most recent of these are robotic-assisted operating tools. In the fourth quarter, Intuitive Surgical posted earnings well above expectations, as the company posted revenue of $677 million and net income of $190 million.

5. Amazon.com Inc.
> Ticker: (NASDAQ: AMZN)
> Industry: E-commerce and entertainment
> Share price: $559
> Market cap: $264 billion
> One-yr. price chg.: +50%
>Annual revenue: $107 billion

Amazon is the largest e-commerce company in the United States and also one of the oldest online businesses, founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, its current CEO. Since then, Amazon has diversified well beyond its role as an online superstore. Its AWS division is among the largest providers of cloud computing services in the world. Amazon also competes with Netflix and Apple as a provider of streaming video products.

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6. Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
> Ticker: (NYSE: BRK-A)
> Industry: Conglomerate
> Share price: $213,900.00
> Market cap: $352 billion
> One-yr. price chg.: -2%
>Annual revenue: $210 billion

Berkshire Hathaway is Warren Buffett’s conglomerate. It owns several dozen companies, which include one of the largest railroads in the United States, a private jet sharing business and the Buffalo News. Berkshire also has an investment portfolio with positions in shares of some of America’s best known companies, including Coca-Cola, IBM and Wal-Mart.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.