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Tuesday August 8, 12:33 pm Eastern Time
U.S. Options-Lernout & Hauspie vols up sharply
CHICAGO, Aug 8 (Reuters) - Implied volatility in options of Belgian speech technology company Lernout and Hauspie (NasdaqNM:LHSP - news) shot up on Tuesday after the company disputed a Wall Street Journal report that discrepancies exist in its sales figures for Korea.
L&H shares tumbled 7-3/16 to 29-13/16 on Nasdaq turnover of about 11.1 million shares in late Tuesday morning trade.
Lernout and Hauspie was also due to release second quarter results late on Tuesday.
Implied volatility for the August 25, 30 and 35 series stood around 125 percent, up from last week's levels of about 65-75 percent, said Ron Bruder, designated primary market maker with Spear, Leeds & Kellogg on the Chicago Board Options Exchange.
Bruder said active call buying pushed up the volatility on the combination of the newspaper report and the expected release of L&H earnings. Put buying was also active.
``The vols across the board have gone up,'' Bruder said. ``September has gone up to the mid-90s. December has gone up to the high 70s and low 80s,'' compared to 65 to 75 percent last week.
He noted options volume was heavy on Monday as about 5,768 interexchange contracts changed hands, of which 4,325 were done on the CBOE.
The CBOE also had the bulk of volume on Tuesday, he said.
One of the busiest options was the August 30 call on the CBOE, which dropped 4 to 2-7/8 on CBOE volume of about 464 contracts and open interest of 218 as of 11:08 a.m. CDT (1608
Gmt).
``L&H executives firmly believe that statements attributed to L&H Korean customers are misquoted or factually incorrect and that other information appearing in the article, including its customer roster, is distorted,'' the company said.
A Wall Street Journal spokesman said he was not immediately able to comment on the company statement. The newspaper's ``Heard on the Street'' column said that ``some companies that L&H has identified as Korean customers say they do no business at all with L&H.''
L&H said two customers, LG Electronics and Hung Chang Corp., were misquoted. |
