RMBS...
By Donna Fuscaldo
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Shares of semiconductor technology maker Rambus Inc. (RMBS) surged on heavy volume Thursday. Company officials couldn't point to a specific reason for the stock's climb.
Steve Tobak, vice president of worldwide marketing at Rambus, said he wasn't sure what was moving the stock higher. He did note that the break up of the Advanced DRAM Technology consortium, a trade group formed by memory makers to set future standards for memory chips, eliminates a potential competitor.
Rambus' surge comes a day after Intel Corp. (INTC) said at its developers forum that the road map for its 850E chipset does not include RDRAM, Rambus' technology that speeds up dynamic random access memory or DRAM.
Michael Cohen, an analyst at Pacific American Securities said the removal of Rambus from Intel's roadmap is a negative. He too couldn't point to a specific reason why Rambus' stock was climbing Thursday.
The analyst did note that the stock has been volatile since late last month when a U.S. appeals court overturned a jury finding that Rambus hid patent applications from industry groups as they set standard for high-speed memory chips.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit threw out the fraud ruling, saying Rambus didn't breach its disclosure duty while participating on a committee that set the standards. In addition, a patent-infringement claim was sent back to Virginia District Court with instructions that may make it easier for Rambus to pursue royalty claims against other companies. The case stemmed from a complaint brought by Infineon Technologies AG (IFX) of Germany.
On Thursday there was talk on the Internet that Infineon had settled with Rambus, but officials at Rambus and Infineon said that was not true.
Recently shares of Rambus, Los Altos, Calif., were trading up 8%, or $1.15, to $15.03, on volume of 14.7 million. Average daily volume is 3.3 million shares.
-Donna Fuscaldo; Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-5253; donna.fuscaldo@dowjones.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 20, 2003 14:11 ET (19:11 GMT) |
