Linux Stocks Soar
on Microsoft's Woes
By Eric Gillin
Staff Reporter
4/3/00 8:55 PM ET
Got Linux?
Got anything to do with Linux?
Know how to say Linux?
Anything Linux-related rose
heavily in after-hours trading as investors turn away from
Microsoft (MSFT:Nasdaq - news - boards) in favor of
one of its biggest sources of competition. Software
makers, platform designers and major market names
affiliated with Linux all put on the feed bag in postclose
news.
Corel (CORL:Nasdaq - news - boards), perhaps best
known for its recent advance into the Linux market, rose
1 53/64 to 12 9/64 on 166,000 shares on Instinet and 2
1/32 to 12 11/32 on 445,000 shares on Island. Inprise
(INPR:Nasdaq - news - boards) might have different
characters, but essentially told the same story. It rose 1
97/256 to 8 1/8 on 20,000 shares on Island.
Red Hat (RHAT:Nasdaq - news - boards) was a
fashionable choice this evening, gaining 5 1/64 to 47
9/64 on 163,000 shares on Instinet and 5 1/4 to 47 1/4
on 309,000 shares on Island. This company makes an
operating system that runs on Linux. It performs a
similar function to Microsoft's Windows program with
one glaring difference -- Red Hat's source code is open,
meaning companies can look inside the guts of its
programs to modify it.
Another Linux supporter, Sun Microsystems
(SUNW:Nasdaq - news - boards) rose 2 3/16 to 92 on
230,000 shares in after-hours trading on Instinet and 3 to
93 on 52,000 shares on Island.
Ahead of the Microsoft ruling, during the day session,
these companies were fairly mixed, indicating that the
turn towards Linux-related companies was a postclose
phenomenon. Sun got killed along with the Nasdaq
Composite Index, while Inprise and Red Hat were only
marginally lower. Corel posted a decent gain, but
nothing like tonight's leap. It looks like the late-night
lurkers have found a favorite sector. |
