Ants Software Soars After Hiring Employee's Spouse for Tests
Santa Barbara, California Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Ants Software.com shares rose as much as 41 percent after saying it hired the husband of an employee to supervise testing of its only product -- software it says can make existing programs run 1,000 times faster.
Ants gained 5 1/2 to 19 1/2 in late-morning trading of 252,900 shares, after touching 20 7/8. The shares have been volatile in recent days, falling from a high of 55 5/8 last week to a low of 5 1/2 yesterday.
Today, it said Thomas Binford, a professor of computer science at Stanford University and husband of company executive Ione Binford, will supervise the company's testing program. In November, Ants had said it would hire an independent third party to conduct the testing.
``Dr. Binford has been given full authority to make whatever arrangements he believes appropriate to ensure the highest standards of objectivity in Ants' benchmark testing programs,' said Frederick Pettit, president and chief executive.
Ione Binford, a former Hewlett Packard program manager, was hired by Ants two weeks ago to be managing director for applications vendor relationships.
Donald Hutton, chairman, declined comment today.
Ants said it expects to make ``well-founded' benchmark data about its software available by the end of the first quarter. It said the data will show how its software improves the performance of a general ledger application ``of one of the world's leading software vendors.' It said it expects to finish developing the interface between an Ants software tool and the general ledger software in January.
In a Nov. 9 release, it projected the development would be completed this month.
Bloomberg this week reported the 20-year old software developer -- which has no revenue -- sold restricted stock valued at $4.8 million over the past two months at half the market price at the time of sales, Hutton said.
Dec/31/1999 12:36
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