Shares of Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:
AMZN) rose more than 1% on Monday after the company announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Quidsi, Inc., which operates Diapers.com, an online baby care specialty site, and Soap.com, an online site for everyday essentials.
AOL, Inc. (NYSE:
AOL) rallied more than 2% after the Wall Street Journal announced that it has hired financial advisers to explore various strategic options for the company, one of which includes a possible tie-up with bigger rival Yahoo Inc. AOL, which has held previous merger talks with Yahoo, has stopped short of reaching out to its potential partner with a formal proposal, the Journal reported Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Coventry Health Care (NYSE:
CVH) soared more than 6% after Wells Fargo upgraded its rating on the company to Outperform from Market Perform. In a research note to clients, the firm stated, "We are upgrading CVH based on our view that the company can achieve at least $3.10 in EPS in 2011 despite the MLR minimums. We believe some of this improvement will come from further efforts to lower SG&A, including selective reductions in broker fees, and increased leverage from more rapid growth as the company may price below trend to accelerate top line growth in markets where their MLR is too low. We are increasing our EPS estimates for 2010 and 2011 to $3.62 and $3.10, respectively, from $2.78 and $2.68, respectively."
Immucor, Inc. (NASDAQ:
BLUD) jumped more than 5% after the company announced that the United States Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, has informed Immucor that its investigation of the company has been closed.
Shares of Motricity gained $1.90, or 6.81%, to $30.03 on Monday. Celcom, the largest 3G mobile operator in Malaysia, announced today it has selected Motricity (MOTR) to provide the technology platform that will deliver personalized, relevant mobile experiences to Celcom's 11million feature and 3G Smartphone subscribers. Motricity's mCore Platform will offer Celcom subscribers a personalized mobile Internet browsing experience with the content and information they want on their mobile phones.
Prana Biotechnology (NASDAQ:
PRAN) jumped as much as 15% after the company announced that it has received confirmation that a re-elected Victorian Labor Government would commit $15 million AUD to the Mental Health Research Institute (MHRI) as crucial funding toward the commencement of a large scale trial of PBT2. MHRI is Prana Biotechnology's long standing partner in Alzheimer's research and PBT2 is its lead compound for the treatment of Alzheimer's and Huntington's Disease.
Disclosure: Author doesn't own any of the stocks discussed here.