Once mentioned in the same breath as Amazon, eBay and Yahoo, Priceline.com has long since become an afterthought.
The company tried to do something about that on Monday by announcing a reverse stock split.
The immediate effect was to send Priceline’s stock – trading under the temporary symbol PCLND – from $4 a share to $25. That was about a 1% decline on the day, but the effect could be much greater if institutions – which currently own only 17% of the company – begin to take notice, since most won’t touch a stock trading under $5 a share.
Priceline also timed the announcement to coincide with its return to profitability. The combination – a higher stock price and improving fundamentals – could be enough to get institutional investors to sit up and take notice.
The broader market soared on a much better than expected New York State manufacturing report, reversing Friday’s losses and then some.
The Nasdaq soared 40 to 1666, the S&P 500 rose 22 to 1010, and the Dow surged 201 to 9318. Volume rose to 1.31 billion shares on the NYSE, and 1.92 billion on the Nasdaq. Advancers led by 24-8 on the NYSE, and by 20-11 on the Nasdaq. Upside volume was 84% on the NYSE, and 68% on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 410-7 on the NYSE, and 249-13 on the Nasdaq.
JD Edwards surged 5.7% after PeopleSoft
said it will try to speed up its merger with the company.
Seagate and Adaptec
surged on a storage pact with HP
.
SCO Group slipped 2.5% over the latest wrinkle in the company’s dispute with IBM
.
Register.com slipped 1% on a change at the top.
eBay and SAP
climbed on a B2B partnership.
Yahoo surged on a deal with BT and bullish analyst comments.
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