SAN FRANCISCO — Steven P. Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, sought to put to rest persistent speculation about his health on Monday, disclosing in a public letter that a hormone problem — and not a recurrence of cancer — had contributed to his very visible weight loss over the last year.
Mr. Jobs lamented that his decision not to give his usual keynote address at the annual Macworld Expo this week in San Francisco “set off another flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed.”
But Mr. Jobs, 53, said that doctors had recently diagnosed a “hormone imbalance” that was depleting proteins in his body as the cause of his weight loss. The remedy, he said, “is relatively simple and straightforward, and I’ve already begun treatment.”
Mr. Jobs said he would continue as chief executive while being treated. Investors sent Apple shares up more than 4 percent, to $94.80 on Monday. “That the stock is up on his announcement that he’s sick tells you something,” said Shaw Wu, an analyst at Kaufman Brothers. “I think expectations were that it would be worse, that he would have to step down.
Investors punished the stock last month after rumors about Mr. Jobs’s health circulated in the wake of his withdrawal from the Macworld Expo. Apple said at the time that Philip W. Schiller, the company’s senior vice president for worldwide marketing, would deliver the keynote address on Tuesday at the conference, usually a high-profile platform for Mr. Jobs to announce new products.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/technology/companies/06apple.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
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