Mark, you got to know when to buy them...you got to know when to hold them, and short too.
>NEW YORK, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Shares of SpeechWorks International Inc. (NASDAQ:SPWX) fell again on Monday amid volatile trading due to the expiration of so-called lock-up provisions on sales of stock by company insiders that will increase the number of shares traded in the market.
The Boston-based company was off $3-1/2, or 9.3 percent, at $34-1/4 on volume of nearly 2.0 million shares. Earlier it bottomed at $32-1/16. The company, though, was still comfortably above its year low of $18-9/16 but trading nearly 67 percent below its 52-week high of $108-8/16.
"They actually have two lock-ups expiring today, one is the six-month lock-up associated with their IPO and the other is one associated with the internal lock-up related to insiders," said James Faucette, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities.
He said that out of the 30.7 million outstanding SpeechWorks shares, only 5.4 million shares were sold during the company's initial public offering (IPO) back in August. "Technically, the rest of those shares (about 24 million) ... are coming on market right now," Faucette said.
Last week, the company beat estimates by posting a narrower-than-expected fourth-quarter loss but some analysts were a bit disappointed with the forward-looking guidance.
Since Thursday's close, SpeechWorks' price has fallen nearly 24 percent.
The lock-up prevented SpeechWorks executives and other market participants who could access privileged information from selling SpeechWorks' stock for a period of six months following the August initial public offering. |
