MOST NOTEWORTHY:

• BigBand Networks Inc. (NASDAQ: BBND) was downgraded to Hold from Buy at Jefferies and to Market Perform from Outperform at Morgan Keegan on the company's negative Q2 pre-announcement to reflect decreased visibility.
  
• Citigroup downgraded Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. (NYSE: CMG) to Hold from Buy on valuation.
  
• Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: VRTX) was downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Merrill Lynch, as they believe investor expectations are high into November's American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases meeting.
  
• Soleil downgraded Cognos Inc. (NASDAQ: COGN) to Hold from Buy as they believe the strong Canadian dollar will depress operating margins and limit share upside.

• Jefferies downgraded Spectra Energy Corp. (NYSE: SE) to Hold from Buy.
  
• Goldman downgraded MeadWestvaco Corp. (NYSE: MWV) to Neutral from Buy and removed Crown Holdings Inc. (NYSE: CCK) from its Americas Conviction Buy List.
  
• UBS downgraded Atlantic Tele-Network Inc. (NASDAQ: ATNI) to Neutral from Buy.

Analyst downgrades: BBND, CMG, VRTX and COGN originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 28 Sep 2007 11:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Big Band Networks (NASDAQ: BBND) had a bad quarter. The provider of infrastructure for moving video around the internet lost 25% of its value today down to $10.60. It announced a modest $54.5 million in revenue and earnings $.07 a share. An IPO this year, Big Band is now off from a high of $21.63.

LimeLight (NASDAQ: LLNW), a content delivery network that competes with industry leader Akamai (NASDAQ: AKAM), is off from $24.33 just after its IPO to $16.15. Akamai's stock is down 35% this year. It earnings disappointed investors.

In a related part of the internet infrastructure, Level 3 (NASDAQ: LVLT) came up with flat revenue and lackluster earnings for the last quarter. Its shares went from $6.42 to $4.93 after its announcement. It has recovered a bit since then.

But, there is a trend here. The companies that provide the pipes and pipe parts to get video around the internet should be doing very well during the "YouTube" generation. They are not.

Two things may be happening. The first is the the service providers are in such fierce competition for business in a market that Wall Street views as hot that margins are being compressd by price cuts. The other possibility is that, after two years of extremely rapid expansion, video streaming and consumption is flattening.

An industry that everyone thought would be a big winner turns out to be the opposite.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 247wallst.com.

Akamai (AKAM) and BigBand (BBND): Bad times for web video providers originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 03 Aug 2007 12:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.