Gilder Endorsed Quantum not PRCM
ocregister.com
Share gain has firm at a loss
STOCKS: Procom's top dogs have no comment on the 84 percent price jump.
November 17, 1999
By JAMES B. KELLEHER
The Orange County Register
Officials at Procom Technology were tight-lipped Tuesday after the share price of the Santa Ana-based computer-data storage company more than doubled in torrid trading.
Procom ended Tuesday's session up $9, or 84 percent, at $19.75 ? its highest closing price ever. At one point during the heated session, investors paid as much as $25.13 a share. The stock trades on Nasdaq under the PRCM symbol.
More than 2.4 million Procom shares changed hands ? more than 40 times the stock's average daily volume.
A Procom spokeswoman declined to comment on the record-breaking performance. She said the company had no news to report and did not plan to issue any statements.
Mark Stewart, at OCStox.com, said the dramatic gains might have been the work of trigger-happy day traders, who saw Procom shares rise past a key price point ? and started firing off buy orders.
"It looks like it may be a technical thing," Stewart said. "When a stock rises past the high of its recent trading range, the sell orders evaporate and the momentum players just jump on it."
A brief mention in a newsletter published by tech guru George Gilder might have started the rally. Procom and rival Quantum were mentioned in the latest issue, but Procom was not added to its list of recommended tech stocks.
"We mentioned Procom briefly, but really we endorsed Quantum more than Procom," he said.
Whatever was behind yesterday's stock movement, it left Procom's four Iranian-born founders very rich. The four own 60 percent of Procom, a collective stake now worth more than $333 million.
But Procom's financial picture has been a disappointment as pricing pressures and reduced demand for CD servers cut into sales and the bottom line. In September, Procom said it lost $2.9 million on revenue of $101.3 million in fiscal year 1999.
Last year, Procom earned $5.4 million on revenue of $111.9 million.
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