Top 10 News Items 9/21-9/25: IPO's Everywhere!, Equity Offerings En Fuego, RIM Falls Sharply as Earnings Disappoint

September 25, 2009 4:15 PM EDT

Here is a recap of the top news items from this week on Wall Street:

1. The market was awash in IPO's this week, the most since 2007:

• A123 Systems (Nasdaq: AONE) - priced at $13.50, above the expected range and finished this week at $19.81.
  
• Apollo Commercial (NYSE: ARI) - priced at $20 and finished this week at $18.70.
  
• Artio Global Investors Inc. (NYSE: ART) - priced at $26 and finished the week at $26.23.
  
• Colony Financial (Nasdaq: CLNY) - priced at $20 and closed this week at $19.36.
  
• Select Medical Holdings Corporation (NYSE: SEM) - priced at $10, below the expected range and finished at $10.01 this week.
  
• Shanda Games (Nasdaq: GAME) - one of the largest IPO's this year priced at $12.50, and closed this week around $11.28.
  
• Vitacost.com (Nasdaq: VITC) - priced at $12 and finished this right around that level.

2. A plethora of Equity Offerings were announced this week, with some notables from: US Airways (NYSE: LCC), Palm (Nasdaq: PALM), AMR Corp. (NYSE: AMR), Hercules Offshore (Nasdaq: HERO), Louisiana-Pacific (NYSE: LPX), Post Properties (NYSE: PPS), Lincoln Educational (Nasdaq: LINC), First Street Finance (NYSE: FSC).

3. Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) disappointed investors with Q2 results this week, sending the stock tumbling by more than 17% on Friday. The BlackBerry maker beat on the earnings number, but missed on the quarterly sales and also guided Q3 sales below the Street.

4. The FOMC kept its key interest rates unchanged at it's meeting this week, adding that rates will stay "exceptionally low" for an "extended period".

5. Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) and Perot Systems (NYSE: PER), on Monday, entered a definitive agreement for Dell to acquire Perot Systems in a transaction valued at approximately $3.9 billion, or $30 per share. Shares of Perot surged about 66% this week, while shares of Dell fell about 8%.

6. Initial jobless claims for the week came in at 530,000 which compared to the Street estimate of 550,000. Continuing claims for the week came in at 6.138 million, versus the consensus of 6.183 million.

7. Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) surprised the Street with some FY10 guidance this week. While the outlook was inline with current analyst estimates, shares sold-off slightly following the report.

8. Shares of AIG (NYSE: AIG) fell nearly 12% this week following rumors that the company could do an equity offering. The stock finished this week at $44.12.

9. Shares of Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: ERTS) rallied 7% on Wednesday amid rumors that Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) was looking to acquire the gaming company. These reports were squashed the next day, however, when a Microsoft spokesmen came out saying that they have not been in discussions with EA.

10. Worse-than-expected durable goods data kept markets under pressure on Friday. Orders for the month of August came in down 2.4%, which compared to the Street estimate of up 0.4%.

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Related Entities

• Initial Jobless Claims
• Federal Open Market Committee
• StreetInsider.com Top 10 News Items for the Week

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