Option traders appear to be setting up for a bullish move on Cogent Inc. (COGT). Traders plowed into 1,571 new call option contracts -- 3.27 times the average volume -- on the stock on Friday. And we know that traders were eager to get into this trade because 99% of the trades came in on the ask price.

Recently, 3M Company (MMM) announced that it was going to acquire Cogent for $10.50 per share. The stock closed Friday at $11.01, up 19.53% during the past month.

Continue reading Cogent Calls and CB Richard Ellis Puts Heating Up

Cogent Calls and CB Richard Ellis Puts Heating Up originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Motricity Dials Up for an IPO

Motricity Dials Up for an IPO originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Analyst upgrades:

• Deutsche Bank upgraded shares of UBS (NYSE: UBS) to Buy from Hold following the company's Q3 update as they believe the quarter marks a turning point.
• Merill raised BP Plc (NYSE: BP) and Total SA (NYSE: TOT) to Neutral from Underperform.
• DISH Network (NASDAQ: DISH) was lifted to Hold from Sell at Soleil.
  
• Friedman Billings upgraded Sovereign Bancorp (NYSE: SOV) to Market Perform from Underperform as they believe the company's deposits are showing stability despite the massive sell-off.
  
• Kaufman Bros. raised Longtop Financial (NYSE: LFT) to Buy from Hold on valuation as they believe Chinese software service stocks now reflect the investment risks.
• Lear (NYSE: LEA) was upgraded to Hold from Sell at Citigroup.

• Morgan Stanley downgraded eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) to Equal Weight from Overweight citing checks that indicate deteriorating trends are worst than expected.
  
• Juniper (NASDAQ: JNPR) and Pediatrix Medical (NYSE: PDX) were downgraded to Market Perform from Outperform at Morgan Keegan.
  
• Merrill cut StatoilHydro (NYSE: STO) to Underperform from Neutral.
  
• HSBC (NYSE: HBC) was lowered to Market Perform from Outperform at Keefe Bruyette.

Continue reading Analyst calls: UBS, BP, TOT, DISH, EBAY, JNPR, HBC, HBAN ...

Analyst calls: UBS, BP, TOT, DISH, EBAY, JNPR, HBC, HBAN ... originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 02 Oct 2008 11:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

MOST NOTEWORTHY:

• B. Riley believes InfoSpace (NASDAQ: INSP) is now positioned to further leverage the growing online search market following divestitures. The firm started shares with a Buy rating and $13 target.
  
• Oppenheimer assumed coverage of Parexel (NASDAQ: PRXL) with an Outperform rating and $70 target, as they believe the company is well-positioned to benefit from positive CRO industry trends and sees room for continued growth.
  
• Wachovia initiated Idearc (NYSE: IAR) with an Underperform rating, citing the challenging industry and cyclical pressures.

• Morgan Keegan initiated GMX Resources (NASDAQ: GMXR) with an Outperform rating.
  
• Goldman assumed coverage of Cigna (NYSE: CI) with a Buy rating.
  
• Merrill started PharMerica (NYSE: PMC) with a Neutral rating.

Analyst initiations: INSP, PRXL and IAR originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 01 Feb 2008 12:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

• Net cash for all the companies considered was at least 35% of market cap.
  
• Riley eliminated companies with market caps under $40 million or high cash-burn rates.
  
• They crossed off those its analysts believed to have business models with little chance of success.

Continue reading Looking for value in the tech rubble: 29 stocks marked down

Looking for value in the tech rubble: 29 stocks marked down originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 07 Jan 2008 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

JC Penney (NYSE: JCP) is trading off almost 4% after cutting its holiday sales outlook.

InfoSpace (NASDAQ: INSP) is up 7% after announcing a special dividend.

Telestone Technologies (NASDAQ: TSTC) is trading up 26% on strong earnings.

Advanced Life Sciences (NASDAQ: ADLS) is up on news of a successful trial of one of its drugs.

Sina (NASDAQ: SINA) is down 10% on weak earnings.

NovaStar Financial (NYSE: NFI) is down 39% on poor earnings and the possibility that its shares could be de-listed.

Stocks trading in the pre-market may open at different prices in the regular session.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com

Big pre-market movers originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 15 Nov 2007 08:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Chase Norlin has spent over a decade in the online space. For example, he was a senior business development executive at ValueClick (NASDAQ: VCLK). He also served as an executive at InfoSpace (NASDAQ: INSP). Oh, and he also helped to create Sony's (NYSE: SNE) first online photo sharing service.

His latest gig: Pixsy. It's a fast-growing company in the online video space.

Well, this week, I had a chance to catch up with Chase.

Q: How are things at Pixsy?

A: Image and Video Search are the fastest growing consumer search verticals on the web. In fact, Image Search is 10% of Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG) traffic and grows 100% every year. We said early on, "if image and video search are so popular, why doesn't every website have it?" And that's the driving growth behind our business. Pixsy is unique in that we can provide image and video search to a website, under their brand, with content tailored to that specific vertical, and enable that site to have their media searched or combined with the Pixsy index. All of this provides great value to publishers: new search traffic, users stay on the site longer, new content tailored to that site, and new ad inventory is created. Additionally, the service provides great value to content providers as they receive free, targeted traffic from users performing image and video search queries. We now have a backlog of 8,000 providers trying to get content into the Pixsy index as a result.

Continue reading CEO interview: Pixsy powers up

CEO interview: Pixsy powers up originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 15 Sep 2007 09:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

MOST NOTEWORTHY:

• Both Friedman Billings and Wachovia upgraded Countrywide Financial (NYSE: CFC) to Market Perform from Underperform following the $2 billion investment by the Bank of America (BAC).

• JMP Securities upgraded Toll Brothers (NYSE: TOL) to Market Perform from Underperform and believes the worst news on housing is reflected and that fears over a disappearing jumbo loan market are overblown.

• Matrix upgraded United Parcel Service (NYSE: UPS) to Buy from Hold to reflect strong demand from overseas shipping.

• Wachovia raised OSI Pharma (NASDAQ: OSIP) to Market Perform from Underperform on valuation...

• UBS raised Joy Global (NASDAQ: JOYG) to Buy from Neutral.

• China Netcom (NYSE: CN) was raised to Neutral from Sell at UBS.

• Roth Capital upgraded IMAX Corp (NASDAQ: IMAX) to Buy from Hold.

• WedBush raised InfoSpace (NASDAQ: INSP) to Buy from Hold.

• Tyson Foods (NYSE: TSN) was upgraded to Hold from Sell.

Analyst upgrades 8-23-07: CFC, TOL, TSN and UPS originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 23 Aug 2007 10:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Before the bell: Futures fall on funds' suspension originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 09 Aug 2007 07:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This week's rumor round-up: Is Packateer on the block? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 01 Jun 2007 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This week, the biggies of wireless attended the CTIA conference in Florida. As always, there were some big announcements, such as from Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S) regarding its huge mobile build-out of WiMAX.

Dipanshu Sharma, the founder of V-Enable, was also there (his firm develops voice-activated wireless applications). Here are some of his takeaways:

Mobile TV
Verizon's (NYSE: VZ) MediaFLO handsets got a lot of attention. Last year mobile TV was dominated by companies using IP streaming for watching TV on the phone. Streaming over IP clogs carriers' networks, so this year both MedioFLO and DVB-H were showcased. It was mostly MediaFLO that stole the show for mobile TV. Verizon already had a MediaFLO-enabled handset, and Cingular has promised to launch by end of this year. I checked out the phones myself and have to say the video quality was almost HD. For the near term, the service is marred by lack of channels (mobiTV has more channels), but I am sure QUALCOMM (NASDAQ: QCOM) will resolve that sooner than later.

Slim phones
Lots and lots of slim phones. I saw one Samsung phone that was slim and wide, rather ugly. On the other hand, Samsung's music phone with screens on both sides was quite innovative.

LBS (Location Based Services) and local search
We saw a few LBS companies demonstrating use of phones' GPS capabilities for navigation. Telenav and NIM have commercial products for the same. As for local search and 411, V-Enable announced that its product won best of show (wireless software) at CTIA by Laptop Magazine. Infospace (NASDAQ: INSP) announced a free local search product for RIM's (NASDAQ: RIMM) BlackBerry.

Mobile advertising
I probably met so many mobile advertising companies that have differentiators that sound all the same that I can't even remember their names. Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) also announced its mobile advertising product. It's unclear if there is room for so many mobile advertising startups to exit, especially when Yahoo! and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) are entering the market very fast.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

CTIA's wireless wonders originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 31 Mar 2007 20:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

• Morgan Stanley downgraded RadioShack (NYSE: RSH) to Underweight from Equal-Weight on concerns over the company's wireless fundamentals and top-line growth.

• Juniper Networks (NASDAQ: JNPR) was downgraded to Strong Sell from Buy at Matrix USA. The firm sees downside to the intrinsic value calculation of $12 given the company's deteriorating fundamentals.

• H.B. Fuller Co (NYSE: FUL) was cut to Sell from Hold at Gabelli following a meeting with management to reflect the recent management exists and the broker's expectation for a challenging first-half of 2007.

• Sepracor (NASDAQ: SEPR) was cut to Underperform from Market Perform at Friedman Billings, as the firm believes generic availability of Ambien may be a bigger challenge to Seprecor's Lunesta than investors expect.

• Jackson Hewitt Tax Service Inc (NYSE: JTX) was cut to Underweight from Market Weight at Thomas Wiesel as they believe the potential near-term competitive trends coupled with potential issues with rising financial product contribution will weigh on valuation.

• Bear Stearns cut Cerner Corp (NASDAQ: CERN) to Peer Perform from Outperform.

• Matrix USA downgraded InfoSpace, Inc (NASDAQ: INSP) to Hold from Buy on valuation.

• Prudential cut Unilever plc (NYSE: UL) to Neutral from Overweight.

• Breen Murray downgraded Century Casinos, Inc (NASDAQ: CNTY) to Hold from Buy.

• Cowen downgraded PeopleSupport, Inc (NASDAQ: PSPT) to Neutral from Outperform based on near-term visibility concerns.

Analyst downgrades 3-19-07: RadioShack cut to Underweight at Morgan Stanley originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 19 Mar 2007 11:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

MOST NOTEWOTHY: ConocoPhillips (COP), InfoSpace, Inc (INSP), Verizon Communications (VZ) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) were some of today's more notable downgrades:

• Goldman Sachs downgraded ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) to Neutral from Buy.

• Stanford cut InfoSpace Inc (NASDAQ: INSP) to Sell from Hold as the firm believes shares are overvalued since the company has no clear plans to reignite growth.

• Buckingham downgraded Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) to Neutral from Accumulate.

• Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) was cut to Hold from Strong Buy at Matrix as the firm believes growing competition is driving down selling prices and narrowing margins.

OTHER DOWNGRADES:

• Goldman downgraded Anadarko Petroleum Corp (NYSE: APC) to Sell from Neutral.

• Merriman cut Fiberstars, Inc (NASDAQ: FBST) to Neutral from Buy.

• Bank of America downgraded Dollar General (NYSE: DG) to Neutral from Buy.

• Cantor cut AudioCodes Ltd (NASDAQ: AUDC) to Hold from Buy following the company's lowered Q1 outlook.

Analyst summaries provided by TheFlyOnTheWall.com (subscription required).

Analyst downgrades 3-15-07: COP, AMD, VZ and APC all downgraded today originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 15 Mar 2007 11:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.