Citrix Options Shadow VMWare Earnings (CTXS, VMW)

VMWare Inc. (NYSE: VMW) soared in after-hours trading, and in our earnings summary we already noted that that this sets a very high bar for Citrix Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CTXS) as a result of the strong virtualization market.  We did not see this options trading in our reviews throughout the trading day, but it turns out that options traders were making very bullish options bets in Citrix today potentially as a virtualization trade.

In the FEB-2010 $45.00 CALLS, there were 14,614 contracts traded versus an open interest of a mere 5,840 contracts.  That is larger than the entire open interest.  The $40.00 PUTS saw some 1,194 contracts trade versus an open interest of 3,135 contracts.  The MAR-2010 $45.00 CALLS traded some 1,466 contracts versus an open interest of 919 contracts.

It turns out that VMWare options for FEB-2010 were very active today, but not very active in any single contract. VMWare rose 18% to $49.61 on 1.9 million shares in the after-hours session.  Citrix traded only 23,178 shares during the after-hours session, butt the after-hours last trade was $41.90 after closing at $41.15.

(after-hours reporting)

JON C. OGG

Apple Preview… Stock/Options Volume Spike (AAPL)

Apple  Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) reports after today’s close and this will be the highlight of the earnings after Monday’s closing bell.  Thomson Reuters has estimates pegged at $2.07 EPS (non-GAAP of course) and revenues of $12.06 billion…  Whispers are significantly higher.  Analysts are close to $240 in price targets, options traders are braced for a move of more than $10 and the chart is giving some very mixed notions in either direction.  We have a very detailed and much more expanded preview posted over at Investorplace.com showing future growth expectations,  past guidance, comparable margin data, and far more details on options and open interest, the charts, more analyst data, competing firm data, and more.

At 12:45 PM EST we have shares up 2.2% at $202.51 on 17.2 million shares.  The average daily volume is 18.2 million shares, so we should hit 150% of normal trading volume if today’s volume holds up.  As a note, this one traded over 20 million shares each day last week and Friday was more than 31 million shares.

In options we have now seen over 71,000 of the active call options trade with a FEB-2010 expiration, while we have seen 57,000 contracts trade of the PUTS for FEB-2010 expiration.

Want the full run-down of analyst calls and post-earnings takes tonight and tomorrow?  Visit our sub-site that aggregates all Apple-related stories with a headline and link to each story out there on Apple at WWW.APPLEFINANCIALNEWS.COM to bookmark.

JON C. OGG

CIENA Runs on Analyst Initiation (CIEN)

CIENA Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEN) is trading up this morning on an analyst call.  Auriga gave it a Buy rating with an $18 target.  The firm has said that the transformational acquisition of Nortel’s metro-ethernet operations is off to a good start.  Shares closed at $12.24 Friday, and shares are up at $12.68 on 25,250 per-market shares at 8:59 AM EST.  The 52-week range is $4.98 to $16.64 and average volume is over 7.1 million shares.

JON C. OGG