Citi Pumps Vonage (VG)

Vonage Holdings Corporation (NYSE: VG) was a recent huge winner on news that it was going to enter the apps market and would be available on iPhones and more.  The shares have risen this week, but it seems muted to what we saw in August and September.  This morning we have seen that Citigroup raised its price target to $1.50 from $0.50 despite maintaining a HOLD rating.  The interest here is not that the stock is trading above that price already, but that it is the first real analyst call from a bulge bracket firm in ages.

That briefly took shares up over $2.00 in August and September.  But the news of the launch of these apps this week did very little compared to the few days in September that this one rose over $2.00 intra-day.  The only $2.00+ high close came on August 26 when it closed at $2.17.

It is not that this week’s gains are bad, but they are just very muted when you start to tally everything up compared to the recent past. Here are this week’s closes with volume compared to last week:

DATE    VOLUME        CLOSE
OCT 6    10,152,200    $1.44
OCT 5    32,800,000    $1.49
OCT 2    5,306,700    $1.32

This morning shares are up 8% at $1.56 on about 800,000 shares, above that $1.50 target, and the 52-week trading range is $0.31 to $2.63 and average volume is about 9 million shares based on the last six week’s crazy trading patterns.

JON C. OGG
OCTOBER 7, 2009