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Technology Stocks : EMC How high can it go? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: W.B. Michaels who wrote (4775)	3/9/1999 3:05:00 PM
From: bob gauthier	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17183

EMC Surges On Analysts' Remarks, Short Squeeze By Eric Auchard NEW YORK (Reuters) - Shares of EMC Corp. (NYSE:EMC - news), the top supplier of corporate data storage equipment, surged Tuesday as positive fallout from last week's new product introduction continued to push the stock to new highs. EMC shares rose as much as $7 before settling back to $114.19, up $3.31, in early-afternoon composite U.S. stock market action. The shares rose $5 Monday. The surge has followed a raft of positive comment by Wall Street analysts after EMC introduced new networked storage products on March 1. Indications of wider investor interest in the fast-growing technology firm have appeared. In addition, traders said EMC's gains showed signs of a squeeze on investors who have sold the stock short, betting on a decline in EMC shares that has so far failed to materialize. ''They are just blowing out the shorts,'' said one trader in the New York Stock Exchange-listed stock. ''This is a short squeeze.'' EMC spokesman Mark Frederickson said the company had released no new announcements since its March 1 meeting with analysts in New York. But since then, EMC officials have met with analysts to discuss corporate developments in London, Singapore and San Francisco, he said. Tuesday, Tokyo brokerage New Japan Securities initiated coverage of EMC with an ''outperform'' rating. Monday, Piper Jaffray recommended EMC for aggressive, growth-oriented investors, putting the stock on its large-cap focus list, according to research notes obtained by Reuters. EMC is also the cover story in an upbeat piece in this week's Business Week magazine. The article charts the Hopkinton, Mass., company's quest to be recognized as one of the computer industry's dominant technology franchises -- in a class with names like Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news), Intel Corp. (Nasdaq:INTC - news) and Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq:CSCO - news) . In addition, a recent survey of major U.S. corporate computer systems managers by market research firm Gartner Group and its brokerage arm SoundView Technology may have helped lift some of the ''millennium bug'' fears that have clouded EMC's outlook. In a report published Monday, SoundView analyst Gary Helmig said a biannual survey of corporate data center managers -- EMC's core customer base -- showed no expectations of a slowdown in computer hardware spending in 1999, but rather an acceleration of the 11 percent growth hardware spending experienced overall in 1998. Some analysts have argued that EMC might suffer a freeze in spending in 1999's second half as corporate spending on new data storage to test for potential year-2000 (Y2K) breakdowns shifts to fixing existing equipment ahead of the millennium. ''Data center budgets will accelerate again in 1999,'' Helmig wrote. ''The net impact of Y2K testing will be positive.'' He also identified EMC as a beneficiary of a trend toward storing more data on mixed computers systems rather than mainframes alone. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------