STOCKS TO WATCH: Foundry Networks, Jupiter Communications, Network Access Solutions, Novellus, StarMedia and Yahoo!

Foundry Networks shares might slip a bit Tuesday after the company announced late Monday that Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown, the lead underwriter for Foundry's IPO, has authorized an early release of approximately 5.1 million shares of common stock.

The released shares will become available for sale Thursday.

Its shares closed off 2 7/8 to 130 7/8 Monday.

Jupiter will be interesting to watch Tuesday after it met analysts' estimates in its fourth quarter, posting a loss of $1.3 million, or 9 cents a share, on sales of $11 million.

First Call consensus expected it to lose 9 cents a share in the quarter.

Jupiter shares closed up 4 1/2 to 32 1/2 ahead of the earnings report.

The $11 million in sales represents a 197 percent improvement from the year-ago quarter when it lost $600,000, or 5 cents a share, on sales of $3.7 million.

In the quarter, the company's contract value jumped a whopping 244 percent to $40.1 million compared to $11.7 million in the same period last year.

Client contracts for its core research services rose 134 percent to 987 from 421 at the end of 1998. Average contract size increased 47 percent to $41,000 from $28,000 from the year-ago quarter.

The provider of high- speed Internet access is set to announce an alliance with SBC Communications Inc. (SBC) that will allow SBC to offer telecommunications services outside its home territory, the Wall Street Journal reported. SBC and Telefonos de Mexico will invest $150 million in Network Access, giving them a 12 percent stake, the newspaper said. Network Access rose 1 5/8 to 35 1/8 Monday. SBC fell 1/8 to 41 7/8.

Novellus might get roughed up a bit Tuesday after Advest Inc. cut the semiconductor-equipment maker from a "buy" recommendation to a "market perform" rating late Monday primarily on valuation.

Its shares closed up 7/8 to 54 3/16 ahead of the downgrade.

It's not that Novellus Systems or any other chip-equipment maker is hurting. Most chip stocks are hovering at or near 52-weeks highs and PC and telecommunications companies are buying microprocessors at a record clip.

But Novellus Systems shares have been on a phenomenal run in the past year, surging from a 52-week low of 14 15/16 in April to a post-split high of 57 7/16 in January. The stock split 2-for-1 in January.

First Call consensus expects it to earn 38 cents a share in the first quarter.

Twenty of the 21 analysts following the stock maintain either a "buy" or "strong buy" recommendation.

StarMedia posted a smaller-than-expected loss in its fourth quarter Monday, losing $27.8 million, or 44 cents a share, on sales of $9 million.

First Call consensus pegged the Internet portal for Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking audiences to lose 50 cents a share in the quarter.

Its shares closed up 1 1/8 to 41 1/8 ahead of the earnings report.

In the quarter, StarMedia recorded 1.7 billion page views, up 900 percent from the year-ago period and up 42 percent from the third quarter.

The $9 million in sales marks a 176 percent jump from the year-ago quarter when it lost $23.6 million, or 53 cents a share, on sales of $3.3 million.

For the year, it lost $90.7 million, or $1.36 a share, on sales of $20.1 million compared to a loss of $46 million, or $1.06 a share, on sales of $5.8 million in fiscal 1998.

Its active advertising customers increased to 479, up 941 percent from the fourth quarter of 1998.

At 10:30 a.m. Pacific Standard Time Monday the biggest site to ever to be forced offline by a hack experienced a coordinated, distributed denial-of-service attack at one of its California data centers.

The site was back online by 1:30 p.m. PST. According to Yahoo!, all user information and data is intact. The attackers were not able to access or change any private information, such as passwords. Yahoo!'s e-mail service was not affected by the attack.

Yahoo! delivers an average 465 million page views per day and is the second most visited site on the Internet after America Online (NYSE: AOL).