Thursday’s top gaining and declining stocks

Tallahassee, FL 4/26/12 (StreetBeat) -- Shares of the following companies made notable moves on Thursday:

Gainers

Citrix Systems (Nasdaq: CTXS +9.28%) shares gained 8%. Analysts at FBR Capital Markets upped their rating on the shares to outperform, on the heels of first-quarter financial results issued late Wednesday.

Watson Pharmaceuticals (NYSE: WPI +6.66%) shares rose 6%. The maker of generic drugs said late Wednesday it agreed to acquire Actavis Group, a privately held company that had 2011 revenue of about $2.5 billion.

Xilinx Inc (Nasdaq: XLNX +6.22%) shares added 7.2%. The company said late Wednesday that profit slipped in the first quarter but revenue rose.

Decliners

Aetna Inc. (NYSE: AET -9.75%) shares fell 10%. Earlier Thursday, the company said first-quarter earnings fell 13% as the health insurer saw the portion of premiums paid out to cover medical costs increase.

Akamai Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: AKAM -8.85%) fell 9%. Late Wednesday, the firm reported first-quarter results and said that its CEO succession plan is underway.

Furiex Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: FURX -25.87%) shares fell 26% on Thursday. Earlier Thursday, the company said the FDA has requested further data from partner Takeda Pharmaceutical, a development that Furiex called disappointing.

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Akamai (Nasdaq: AKAM) to Buy Cotendo for $268 Million to Expand Cloud, Mobile Services

Tallahassee, FL 12/12/11 (StreetBeat) -- Akamai Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: AKAM), whose server network lets businesses speed data delivery, agreed to buy Cotendo for about $268 million in cash to expand Internet- based and mobile services.

Cotendo, founded in 2008 and based in Sunnyvale, California, has about 100 employees, half of them in Israel, where the company has a technology center, according to a statement today.

The purchase is Akamai’s second largest after the $2.19 billion acquisition of InterVU Inc. in 2000, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Cotendo will bring acceleration technologies based on the so-called cloud, a Web-based computing system, used by customers such as phone companies and social networks.

Cotendo’s investors include venture-capital firms Sequoia Capital and Benchmark Capital, as well as Juniper Networks Inc., according to its website.

Akamai, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, rose 1.2 percent to $27 at 8:03 a.m. New York time before the opening of the markets. The company, with a market capitalization of $4.79 billion and about 2,300 employees, had slumped 43 percent this year before today.

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LargeCap Stocks to Keep an Eye on Today

Tomahawk, WI 10/13/2011 (PennyPayDay) – Specialty pet retailer PetSmart raised its third-quarter earnings guidance to 46 cents to 48 cents a share from a previous range of 41 cents to 45 cents. The company also raised full-year guidance to $2.46 to $2.52 a share from the previous range of $2.40 to $2.48 a share.

This comes after Goldman Sachs' analysts last week downgraded the stock on concerns about strained consumer spending.

Shares were plunging 19.5% to $35.46 in premarket trading Thursday as investors took profits.

The CEO of web services company AOL, Tim Armstrong has been speaking with key shareholders in the last few weeks to sell the idea of a sale to Yahoo! that could result in up to $1.5 billion of cost savings, Reuters reported.

AOL shares were rising 4.3% to $13.72. Yahoo! shares were down 0.4% to $15.70.

Senior Housing Properties Trust was tumbling 3% to $21.15 after 8 million common shares were priced at $21 a share.

Akamai Technologies shares were advancing 2.3% to $23.91 as the company was named as a potential acquisition target for Internet search giant Google. A Business Insider report shortly before the close Wednesday cited numerous unnamed sources in the advertising technology industry as saying Akamai is the name that keeps coming up while chasing a rumor that Google may be pursuing a deal.

Google is expected by analysts on Thursday to report third-quarter earnings of $8.74 a share, up from $7.64 a share a year earlier. Google shares were flat at $548.30.

Research In Motion is seeing a 'significant increase in service levels' for BlackBerry in Europe, the Middle East and Africa after outages spread across the globe this week.

Shares were falling 2.2% to $23.35.

JPMorgan's third-quarter profit declined 4% to $4.26 billion, or $1.02 a share.

Analysts were expecting earnings of 91 cents a share on revenue of $23.39 billion.

Shares were down 1.9% to $32.57.

Unionized coking coal workers in Australia have overwhelmingly rejected a labor contract proposed by mining giant BHP Billiton and are getting ready for more strikes. Shares were down 1.3% to $75.21.

Retail giant Wal-Mart will now focus its mergers and acquisition strategy on existing markets, Bloomberg reported, citing Doug McMillon, chief executive of Wal-Mart's international unit, who was speaking at an investor conference this week. Shares were down 0.8% to $54.75.

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LargeCap Stocks to Keep an Eye on Today

Tomahawk, WI 10/4/2011 (PennyPayDay) – Acme Packet, a Bedford, Mass.-based provider of network services, gave a disappointing third-quarter forecast, citing a delay in securing a deal with a large customer in North America.

The company said it now sees non-GAAP earnings of 20 cents to 22 cents a share in the third quarter on revenue of around $70 million, well below the average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters for a profit of 30 cents a share on revenue of $82.8 million.

Shares were plunging 16.1% to $35.94 in premarket trading Wednesday.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and the city of New York are suing Bank of New York Mellon for nearly $2 billion, for allegedly defrauding clients in foreign currency exchange transactions.

Shares were tumbling 3.8% to $18.11.

Shares of Advanced Micro Devices were tumbling 2.1% to $4.62 after the chipmaker was downgraded to market perform from outperform at Sanford C. Bernstein.

Yum! Brands reiterated its full-year earnings-per-share forecast for growth of at least 12% after meeting quarterly profit expectations as continued strong performance in China drove year-over-year revenue growth of more than 14%.

The parent company of Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut said it earned $383 million, or 80 cents a share, in its third quarter, up 7.3% from a year-earlier profit of $357 million, or 74 cents. Excluding one-time items, earnings came in at 83 cents a share, in line with analysts' consensus call.

Shares were down 1.9% to $48.48.

Internet services provider Akamai Technologies may finally be cheap enough to lure International Business Machines or Verizon Communications as the most speculated U.S. takeover target since 2005 approaches its lowest valuation on record, Bloomberg reported.

Akamai shares were rising 1.9% to $20.95.

Samsung, a day after Apple unveiled the new iPhone 4S , is seeking to block the sale of the new device in France and Italy. Samsung is alleging the iPhone 4S infringes its patents on wireless technology.

Apple shares were falling 1.3% to $367.52.

Internet search giant Google has been downgraded to hold from buy at Stifel Nicolaus.

Shares were down 0.8% to $498.

Bank of America could face fraud claims after its Countrywide unit submitted faulty borrower data for federally-insured mortgages, according to Bloomberg.

Shares were down 0.4% to $5.74.

Costco, the warehouse retailer, said net income in the fourth quarter rose about 10.6% as sales jumped 17%.

Net income in the fourth quarter was $478 million, or $1.08 a share, compared with $432 million, or 97 cents, a year earlier. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected Costco to earn $1.10 a share.

Shares were trading sideways at $81.70.

Shares of Monsanto were rising 2% to $64.50 after the agricultural products company forecast mid-teens earnings growth for the new fiscal year and reported a fourth-quarter loss of 22 cents a share vs. the Wall Street consensus target of a loss of 27 cents.

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