Ups and downs. (Investments & Finance).Two local companies -- Overture overture, instrumental musical composition written as an introduction to an opera, ballet, oratorio, musical, or play. The earliest Italian opera overtures were simply pieces of orchestral music and were called sinfonie. Services Inc. and Computer Sciences Corp. -- saw their stock prices whipsaw Whipsaw A condition where an investor's security transaction is quickly followed by an opposite reaction. Sometimes referred to as "being whipped". Notes: An example would be buying a stock and, shortly after, the stock falls substantially in price. last week after analysts raised questions that spooked shareholders. Shares of paid search listings provider Overture fell as much as 23 percent to $11.62 on April 2 after SoundView Technology Group analyst Jordan Rohan speculated that a large customer, Microsoft Corp., was investing in a rival technology. Overture, which is based in Pasadena, and Microsoft both denied the report, and the stock partly rebounded the same day. On April 3, however, Overture's stock resumed its decline, and at the end of trading stood at $12.71, its lowest close since October 2001. Since the beginning of the year, Overture's stock has fallen more than 50 percent as competition from Google Inc. and others infringed on its previously successful formula. Computer Sciences fared better the day after its accounting got questioned in a skeptical analyst's report. The shares fell 12 percent on April 2 after Sanford Bernstein & Co. analyst Rod Bourgeois said he didn't understand how the El Segundo-based company treated operating costs operating costs npl → gastos mpl operacionales . The costs on some commercial contracts are booked as an asset; but at CSC (Card Security Code) A three- or four-digit number printed on the back of credit cards for security purposes. Called "Card Verification Value" (CVV) by Visa, "Card Validation Code" (CVC) by MasterCard and "Card Identification (CID) by American Express and Discover, that asset's size has increased 80 percent in the past two years, despite a 65 percent decline in commercial contract signings. The two should move in tandem Adv. 1. in tandem - one behind the other; "ride tandem on a bicycle built for two"; "riding horses down the path in tandem" tandem , he reasoned. Meanwhile, operating costs, as a percentage of revenues, had remained stagnant stagnant /stag·nant/ (stag´nant) 1. motionless; not flowing or moving. 2. inactive; not developing or progressing. even as the company hired 67,000 workers since 1998, Bourgeois said. CSC countered the report with an explanation of its accounting released later that day. The company said it had reduced expenses in other ways, and said there's a time lag between when the contracts are signed and when the costs are incurred. The company, one of the largest computer services Data processing (timesharing, batch processing), software development and consulting services. See service bureau, SaaS and ASP. firms in the nation, got support from at least two other equity analysts who upgraded their ratings on CSC's stock the next day. It also announced a 10-year contract worth nearly $1 billion with the U.K.'s Ministry of Defense. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion