wsj heard on the net
JDS Uniphase and S&P Deny Rumor
Rumors have trickled onto several online message boards that JDS
Uniphase, a San Jose, Calif., fiber optics company, is poised to join the
venerable Standard & Poors 500-stock index.
But officials from JDS Uniphase and Standard & Poors, which chooses
the companies that are included in its broadly followed stock-market
barometer, are throwing cold water on such speculation.
David Blitzer, chairman of S&P's Index Committee, says the organization
has said nothing about adding JDS Uniphase. "As a policy we don't
comment on additions or deletions or anything of that nature," he says.
"We have absolutely no knowledge of it at all, literally none, we've had no
contact with S&P," adds Kevin Kalkhoven, co-chairman and chief
executive officer of JDS Uniphase.
On Yahoo! Finance (finance.yahoo.com), one post titled "JDSU to be
added to S&P 500," attributed the rumor to Stockwinners.com
(www.stockwinners.com), a Web site devoted to Wall Street gossip.
Seyed Mohammadi, editor of Stockwinner.com. says his site ran the item
about JDS Uniphase on Wednesday. "We have heard rumors that JDS is a
logical choice to (enter) the S&P," he says, declining to divulge the source.
The addition of a company's stock to an index is usually bullish news for
investors. These shares tend to rise as managers of mutual funds that try to
mirror the performance of the index add them to their portfolios.
Nevertheless, on Wednesday, shares of JDS Uniphase didn't seem to
benefit from the rumors. The stock closed down 10 to 180 11/16 on the
Nasdaq Stock Market. But some investors were unfazed.
"I am ... sticking to my belief that it will happen very soon considering the
market cap and being the dominant player in the sector. Now at annualized
1 billion in revenue as well," a poster wrote on Silicon Investor
(www.siliconinvestor.com) |
