Vitesse gains on upgrade

Vitesse Semiconductor Corp. (Nasdaq: VTSS) accelerated 11 percent Tuesday as Adam Harkness became the latest brokerage to upgrade the stock.

Shares in the communications chip-maker were up 10 9/64 to 106 5/64. The stock soared recently following a bullish outlook.

On Tuesday, Adam Harkness analyst Rick Faust raised his rating on the stock to "strong buy" from "accumulate."

Vitesse also announced the introduction of its 10-bit Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel transceivers for network designers of switches, routers, hubs, host adapters, backplane interconnects and test equipment.

The upgrade and new products just padded Monday's gains.

On Monday, Vitesse said it would buy Orologic Inc. for $450 million in common stock. The stock also received a strong rating from Prudential Securities, which initiated coverage on the stock with a "strong buy" rating.

Vitesse said the Orologic transaction will reduce its earnings excluding the effects of related write-offs and amortization of goodwill. The deal will be completed by the end of April and accounted for as a purchase.

Orologic is a fabless semiconductor company that develops high performance system on a chip that enable data packet processing at OC-48 and OC-192 rates.

The company's competitors include Conexant Systems (Nasdaq: CNXT), TriQuint Semiconductor (Nasdaq: TQNT) and Fujitsu.

Reuters contributed to this report.