MIDDAY MARKETS: Nortel and Amazon sway techs
The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index fell 9 to 448.65.
Shares in Nortel Networks (NYSE: NT) were down 26 percent, or 16.13 to 47.19, after the company showed disappointing optical revenue growth in the third quarter. Competitors also suffered; Alcatel (NYSE: ALA) was down 3.9 to 62, Ciena (Nasdaq: CIEN) lost 21.56 to 113.81, Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) fell 2 to 52.87 and JDS Uniphase (Nasdaq: JDSU) was down 15.5 to 79.56.
Shares of Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) jumped 5.81 to 35.38 after the company surprised investors with a smaller-than-expected loss. AOL (NYSE: AOL) gained 1.09 to 49.12 and Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) was up 2.56 to 61.19.
AT&T (NYSE: T), down 2.19 to 24.69, finally made it official Wednesday, announcing plans to split itself into four separate businesses representing wireless, broadband, consumer and business markets.
eMerge Interactive Inc. (Nasdaq: EMRG), unchanged at 11.5, reported a third quarter loss of 13 cents a share Wednesday, on target with First Call''s consensus estimates. Revenues boomed.
Williams Communications Group Inc. (NYSE: WCG), down 0.25 to 16.94, said its third quarter loss was 32 cents a share, much less than First Call''s expected loss of 49 cents a share. The company also said fourth quarter revenue will likely exceed current analyst consensus by about 10 percent.
pcOrder.com Inc.''s (Nasdaq: PCOR) shares shot up 2.69 to 6.125 in early trading Wednesday on the news that Trilogy Software Inc. will acquire the web software maker. pcOrder also released its earnings for the third quarter.
Viant Corp. (Nasdaq: VIAN), down 0.16 to 6.31, beat analyst estimates in the third quarter ended Sept. 29, posting a net loss of $1.1 million, or 2 cents a share. The company also reorganized to help turn around sagging performance.
Among other leading tech issues: Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) dropped 1.88 to 53, Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) rose 1.06 to 43.06, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) was up 1.68 to 63.18 and Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) shed 1.03 to 35.69.