Financial News USA (press release)
Shares fell $1.10, or 4.6 percent, to $22.75 in after-hours trading. The stock had closed up 8 cents at $23.85 in the regular session.
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Mueller Water Products, Inc. (NYSE: MWA) priced a 32.28 million share secondary offering of common stock at $4.75 through BofA Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs. This offering size was increased on demand as the original amount was to be 27.5 million shares. The $144.1 million in gross proceeds is to be used to purchase additional shares and to repay a portion of indebtedness outstanding under its credit agreement. Co-managers a At 8:47 AM EST we have seen 370,000 shares trade and the stock is actually up 2% at $4.95. Expect the volume here to blow though the 1.1 million share average as the opening gets closer. -JON OGG
Origin Agritech Limited (NASDAQ: SEED) announced that its Origin Biotechnology unit reached a worldwide agreement with the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Sichuan Biotech Engineering, Limited. Those two will jointly own the rights to an internally developed gene which is highly tolerant to glyphosate herbicide. This glyphosate-tolerance gene is entirely new to the consumer markets in that it has never been commercialized, and is protected by patents granted separately by China and USA separately. SEED is surging on the news. At the open we have a gain of almost 10% at $5.25 on 87,000 shares versus average volume of 120,000. The 52-week high is $6.31. -Jon C. Ogg
US Bancorp (NYSE: USB) is up but is surprisingly not getting as much attention as we would have expected. At 8:51 AM EST we have only seen 18,000 shares trade hands versus an average volume of 17 million shares. The gain is only 1.5% at $23.15. The news that is out is that Rochdale’s Dick Bove upgraded his old Neutral rating to a new BUY rating. The old $25 target was hiked to $28 as well. Shares are still up over 100% from its March lows, but we would be looking for stock upside and a volume spike here as the open gets closer. JON OGG
Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL) has already seen 150% of a full average daily trading volume ahead of today’s earnings and it is not even 1:00 PM EST. As of 12:35 AM EST we have seen almost 43 million shares trade hands and the average volume is about 29.7 million shares. Shares are also down 2.4% at $22.13. We are also seeing high put and call trading in options contracts…. Here are today’s CALL and PUT trading for SEPT-2009 options which expire in just over 48 hours from today’s close:
CALL$   Vol.  Op. Int.
21.00Â Â Â 4,023Â Â Â 14,365
22.00Â Â Â 6,842Â Â Â 39,815
23.00Â Â Â 7,080Â Â Â 25,522
PUT$$    Vol.   Op.Int.
20.00Â Â Â 1,146Â Â Â 17,162
21.00Â Â Â 1,904Â Â Â 20,924
22.00Â Â Â 3,751Â Â Â 12,500
23.00Â Â Â 9,120Â Â Â 29,918
A full earnings preview with chart and options trading expectations is available at 24/7 Wall Street.
Jon C. Ogg
September 16, 2009
Flextronics International Ltd. (NASDAQ: FLEX) is surging this morning after a Jim Cramer tout last night on CNBC’s MAD MONEY after he said that the EMS operation is trading at just 12 times 2011 earnings and said he’s a buyer of FLEX. At 9:02 AM EST we have shares trading up 9% at $7.54 on almost 300,000 shares. Average volume is close to 9 million shares and the 52-week high here is $8.23. While this is not a 52-week high it is a high that has not been seen since OCT-2008. If this one ramps too much, we’d look for gains elsewhere in EMS rivals like Celestica Inc. (NYSE: CLS), Sanmina-SCI Corp. (NASDAQ: SANM) and Jabil Circuit Inc. (NYSE: JBL). -JON OGG
Omniture, Inc. (NASDAQ: OMTR) is the pre-market leader after getting acquired by Adobe Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBE). This one closed at $17.33 yesterday and is up almost 25% at $21.60 on pre-market volume of over 4 million shares as of 8:56 AM EST. As this is a buyout, that is of little surprise. But acquirer Adobe also reported that its profit fell by 29% and revenue fell by about 21% last quarter based on weak demand for its traditional software. We have Adobe down almost 5% at $33.90 on almost 200,000 shares versus an average day’s trading volume of $6.7 million shares. The 52-week high for Adobe is $45.26. -JON OGG