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THE DAY AHEAD: Stocks to Watch

2 min read

Expect the following technology stocks to be among Monday's most actively traded issues: Doubleclick, eBay, Eclipsys, Global Crossing and Qwest.

  • DoubleClick Inc. (Nasdaq: DCLK)

    The Wall Street Journal reported that DoubleClick is merging with Abacus Direct Corp. (Nasdaq: ABDR), a company that markets consumer-purchasing data to catalog firms, in an all-stock merger, valued at $1 billion.

    The merger is expected to be announced Monday.

    The merger is expected to close during the third quarter of this year.

  • eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY)

    The online auctioneer said its second quarter sales will be between $3 million to $5 million lower than originally expected thanks to the 22-plus hours it was down Thursday and part of Friday. Company officials said a failure in software from Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) caused its service to shut down.

    eBay said it would extend auctions scheduled to expire during the outage by 48 hours and would refund all fees for all auctions between June 9 and June 11.

    First Call consensus expects eBay to earn 5 cents a share in its second quarter, up from the 2 cents a share it earned in the year-ago period.

    eBay shares closed off 16 13/16 to 165 7/8 Friday.

  • Eclipsys Corp. (Nasdaq: ECLP)

    Eclipsys said it signed an agreement to purchase privately held MSI Solutions which will result in a one-time pre-tax charge to earnings of between $6.5 million and $7.5 million in the second quarter.

    Its shares closed up 5/16 to 23 13/16 Friday.

    The stock peaked at 40 3/8 in February after falling to a low of 11 7/8 in August.

    Eclipsys develops healthcare information technology software and service solutions.

  • Qwest Communications International Inc. (Nasdaq: QWST), Global Crossing (Nasdaq: GBLX)

    Qwest said Sunday it offered to buy U S West Inc. (NYSE: USW) and long-distance provider Frontier Corp. (NYSE: FRO) for $55 billion in cash and stock, attempting to break up rival Global Crossing Ltd.'s (Nasdaq: GBLX) plans to buy both companies.

    Company officials said it would pay up to $80 per share in its common stock for U S West and $20 per share in cash and $55 per share in stock for Frontier.

    Qwest said the transactions would also include the assumption of about $11.4 billion in debt, in addition to the cash and stock it is offering.

    Global Crossing and U S West said in May they agreed to merge in a stock deal worth $37 billion. In March, Global Crossing said it would buy Frontier for $11.2 billion.

    Qwest said in a statement Sunday its proposals are "financially and strategically superior to Global Crossing's pending transactions."

    In any case, Qwest has started a bidding war. Global Crossing and Qwest have fancy networks, but need customers for them. The loser of this battle could be relegated to niche status in the telecommunications world.

    The winners will be U S West and Frontier shareholders.