THE DAY AHEAD: Stocks to Watch
Expect the following stocks to be among Monday's movers: AOL, Cisco, High Speed Access, Wit Capital, Source Media and Synopsis.
There may be a ray of hope that AOL will be able to crack into AT&T's cable network. A U.S. District court ruled on Friday that Portland can require Ma Bell to open its high-speed lines to competition as part of the city's approval of its merger with Tele-Communications Inc.
AT&T said it would appeal. But what's this decision mean? Will every city in the U.S. have the right to twist every proposed merger to their liking? Don't bet on it. The most likely end to this decision is that it will put a fire under the Federal Commmunications Commission to make a final ruling on the issue.
AOL rose 12 1/4 to 118 and AT&T dipped 7/8 to 53 3/8.
The data networking company and Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT) are jointly buying Bosch Telecom Inc., the U.S. unit of Robert Bosch GMBH, which develops LMDS (local multipoint distribution service) wireless technology. The new company will be named SpectraPoint Wireless, with Motorola owning 81 percent of the company.
LMDS is a wireless technology that delivers phone calls and high-speed data to both the consumer and commercial markets. LMDS is one of many acronym-laden wireless technologies. Qualcomm Inc. (Nasdaq: QCOM) uses CDMA (code division mulitple access) technology in the U.S. and China and Nokia Oyj (NYSE: NOK) uses GSM (global system for mobile communications) in Europe. Sprint Corp. (NYSE: FON) built a wireless network based on PCS (personal communications services) in the U.S. The differences between each standard is the frequency the services run on, which affect its quality as well as the life of a cell phone battery.
Cisco gained 6 1/16 to 114 7/8 and Motorola rose 5 1/8 to 87 7/8.
So what do you do for an encore? High Speed had a pretty impressive market debut Friday as its initial public offering jumped to 20 3/8, up 7 3/8, from an original price of $13 a share.
High Speed, which provides Internet cable access, raised $169 million from the 13 million share offering.
As is the case with most recent IPOs, the second day gains, or losses, are always noteworthy.
Another stock worth watching for the encore performance. Wit Capital closed up 5 7/8 at 14 7/8 from an offering price of $9.
The online investment bank had the wind behind it in a generally upbeat day for the markets on Friday.
What now? Is this the next E*Trade? Wit's a little further along in functioning as an investment bank, underwriting in more than a dozen initial and follow-on offerings thus far. These offerings are made available to its clients on a "first come first served" basis. Wit also has an online brokerage business.
E*Trade, however, isn't going to be quiet. The company officially launched E*Offering today to compete with Wit.
Off with their heads! The streaming media technology company's chairmain Timothy Peters, its president John Reed and Maryann Walsh, Source's corporate counsel, resigned on Friday. Chief executive Stephen Palley will assume the duties president and chairman. The three will stay on as consultants.
Palley came on board in April from his role as chief operating officer at King World Productions. Palley nudged Peters to the role of chairman. To be sure. it's not an uncommon practice for an outsider to bring in their own management team.
Source Media added 5/16 to 17 5/8.
The second-largest electronic design software company said Friday at market close that it plans to buy back $200 million of its shares this year in the open market. Shares closed unchanged at 43 5/8.
-Eric C. Fleming contributed to this report.>