Cups are overflowing

SEATTLE — A sold-out crowd Wednesday gave Starbucks Corp. Chairman Howard Schultz something you rarely see at a straight-laced shareholders meeting — many boisterous rounds of applause.

That wasn’t surprising, given that Schultz opened Wednesday’s shareholders meeting by boasting that the company’s stock had soared to an all-time high on strong earnings the week before.

Starbucks shares rose 40 cents, or 1.2 percent, to close at $34.72 in trading Wednesday on the Nasdaq Stock Market after hitting a new all-time high of $35 in intraday trading.

Schultz played to the crowd Wednesday, showing a slide noting that, since the company went public in 1992, share value had risen 6,400 percent — enough to turn a $10,000 investment into roughly $650,000. By comparison, the S&P 500 rose 211 percent during the same period.

There’s usually plenty of pomp and circumstance surrounding the annual meeting for Starbucks, the maker of pricey drinks. But this time around, there was an extra dose of glee and optimism in executives’ presentations to the estimated 5,000 shareholders at Seattle’s McCaw Hall, the city’s ballet and opera house.

Starbucks expects to open 1,800 stores worldwide this fiscal year ending in October, and Chief Executive Jim Donald said the company thinks it will one day be able to open stores even more rapidly.