US Stock Market Closing Notes (DEC 18, 2006)

(ABBI) Abraxis Rose 4.9% to $29.24 after it showed 60% gain in ABRAXANE in tumor response compared to Taxotere.

(AHO) Royal Ahold fell 1.5% to $10.59 despite reports that it’s is in talks with private equity over potentially selling is US food service unit.

(AMSC) American Superconductor fell 9% to $9.83 after it lowered guidance.

(BMET) Biomet Shares fell 1% to $41.59 after its $44.00 private equity buyout was finally announced.

(SNN) Smith & Nephew rose a sharp 7% to $50.58 after it broke off dilutive acquisition talks with Biomet and after Merrill Lynch raised its rating to a Buy.

(BPA) BioSante rose a sharp 24% to $3.14 after it received FDA approval on Bio-E-Gel (Elestrin) for hot flashes.

(CMX) Caremark gets $26 Billion merger from Express Scripts, threatening the CVS deal; CMX rose 10.5% to $55.58.

(CVS) CVS fell 1.7% to $30.01 after the competing deal for Caremark and after it puts added pressure on the company to perform.

(H) Realogy rose  19% to $30.40 after the company received a $30.00 per share cash offer in a buyout from Apollo Management in a $9 Billion deal after debt assumptions.

(HET) Harrah’s rose 3% to $82.18 on reports that the board was accepting a $90 private equity buyout; the dela could take 1-year to clse, but maybe that’s being pessimistic.

(IMAX) IMAX traded down 8.9% to $3.71 after the company decided to rule out a potential takeover, after down 60% that was obvious.

(WTW) Weight Watchers gained 9% to $51.45 after announcing a self tender to lower its share count.

(NTRI) Nurti-system fell another 3.6% to $62.25 on worries of WTW competition.

(LLL) L3 fell almost 6% to $79.00 after losing language training pact to DynCorp according to WSJ.

(MRD) MacDermid gets $35 buyout offer from a CEO-led group; shares rose 3.7% to $34.01.

(OVEN) Turbo Chef shares rose a sharp 7% to $15.99 after Barron’s reported that shares could rise 40% in 2007.

(SGR) Shaw Group rose 8.5% to $33.20 as its consortium with Westinghouse was selected for new construction of nuclear plants in China.

(SWHC) Smith & Wesson rose 0.9% to $10.36 after it announced it is paying $102M to acquire Thompson/Center Arms and raised 2007 & 2008 guidance as result of additional company.

(UBET) YouBet.com fell 5% to $3.30 after it filed to sell 6+ million shares.

(BMC) BMC Software fell 0.1% to $32.35 after it was raised to Overweight at Lehman.

(C) Citigroup rose 2.5% to $55.44 after it was raised to Buy at Merrill Lynch.

(ELK) ElkCorp rose 8% to $38.81 on a Carlyle buyout.

Jon C. Ogg
December 18, 2006