Allegiant Travel Co. (NASDAQ: ALGT) will be a new member of the S&P Small Cap 600 Index and will replace Regal Beloit in the index after the close of trading on Tuesday, December 8.  Allegiant is up 2.7% on only 250,00 shares.  It looks likely that more shares will need to be purchased based upon a $866 million market cap.

AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL) is still trading as a when-issued stock but it will replace Imation Corp. (NYSE: IMN) in the S&P MidCap 400 after the close of trading on Wednesday, December 9.  Imation had a market capitalization of less than $325 million, under the minimum requirements for a mid-cap constituent.  Index sellers already have taken almost 4% out of the Imation price based upon index selling pressure as the entire weighting will be dumped.

Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX), a S&P 100 and S&P 500 constituent, is spinning off AOL to shareholders on or about that date on a 1 for 11 share tax-free dividend basis.  Time Warner will remain in both the S&P 100 and S&P 500 indices. Fractional shares will be sold off and that cash will be distributed, but the tax portion is considered taxable. The exact market cap for AOL is not yet known as it trades on a when-issued basis.  That figure is north of $2.5 billion and is not deemed to be north of and is not more than $3.3 billion based on average comparisons.

The bad news is that AOL not going into the S&P 500 Index will create some mandatory S&P 500 Index benchmark fund selling in shares of Time Warner.  But the good news is that this will likely be far less index selling compared to many other key spin-offs.

Our calculations for what the real translation of index trackers differs from others because we have discussed with S&P analysts about their own interpretations of index trackers.  Based upon a conversation we had and assuming the market remains stable, we would expect only about 10 million Time Warner net shares over the coming days to have to be absorbed, and that figure will be easy to be absorbed as the indexers have a week before the formal change.  Any additional shares that need to be sold won’t have to be immediately sold as most funds have looser buy and sell policies on index changes.

JON C. OGG

Avocet Corporation (NASDAQ: AVCT) is surging to new recent highs on a buyout on exponential trading volume.

E*TRADE FINANCIAL Corporation (NASDAQ: ETFC), CIT Group Inc. (NYSE: CIT), and American International Group, Inc. (NYSE: AIG) are all trading higher this morning on no significant news besides market sentiment.

Investors Real Estate Trust (NASDAQ: IRET) is trading down about 4% on a secondary offering.

Cirrus Logic Inc. (NASDAQ: CRUS) was very active in the upside gainers last night on raised guidance and is still indicated higher.

NutriSystem Inc. (NASDAQ: NTRI) is rocketing on the Wal-Mart pact, partly because of one monster short interest.

You can join our open email distribution list which goes out several times per week for reminders of the top day trader alerts, analyst upgrades and downgrades, IPO’s, key secondary offerings, guru investor data on Buffett and others, mergers, and more.

JON C. OGG

OCTOBER 6, 2009

• AllianceBernstein (AB) noted as a hidden gem in Barron’s cover story.
• Answers Corp. (ANSW) announced a collaboration with Nokia for Series 40 and S60 mobile devices.
• Avocet (AVCT) lowered guidance
• Biogen-Idec (BIIB) and Elan (ELN) say that the safety data continues to support a favorable benefit-risk profile for TYSABRI.
• Celgene Corp. (CELG) trading up 5% after guidance is in-line for 2007 and issued new guidance for 2008.
• CNET (CNET) had a Jana Partners-led investor group take a 21% stake and try to oust the board of directors.
• Diana Shipping (DSX) trading up almost 2% on positive Barron’s article over weekend.
• 8X8 Inc. (EGHT) introduced a free international mobile calling plan with its new Packet8 MobileTalk trial.
• hhgregg (HGG) reaffirmed 2008 EPS guidance of $0.95 to $1.03 vs. $1.00 est.; s-s-s up 3%.
• JA Solar (JASO) announced a 3 for 1 stock split.
• Jefferies (JEF) issued earnings warning.
• Krispy Kreme (KKD) announced it has elected a new CEO.
• Microsoft (MSFT) said at "CES" it had 100 million licenses sold of Windows Vista; 17.7 million Xbox 360′s, 10 million Xbox live users; will have new content downloads.
• Napster (NAPS) will sell music with less copyright protection as MP3 files.
• Nice Systems (NICE) received multi-million dollar orders from 2 of the top-3 US banks for fraud alert.
• Rogers Communications (RCI) raised annual dividend from $0.50 to $1.00 and put 2008 revenues $11.2 to $11.5 Billion versus $11.25 Billion estimates; announced share buyback.
• Schnitzer Steel (SCHN) missed earnings and revenue targets; stock trading down 1% so far.
• Sony (SNE) introduces new tri-recording video Camcorder at "CES".
• TASER (TASR) unveils its new leopard print TASER C2 personal protection device at the 2008 International Consumer Electronic tradeshow in Las Vegas today.
• Zumiez (ZUMZ) said December s-s-s was +3.9%, but guided lower; shares down over 1%.

Jon C. Ogg
January 7, 2007

Fair Isaac (NYSE:FIC) approved a $250 million share buyback plan, compared to a market cap of $2 Billion.

Mirant Corp. (NYSE:MIR) had one of the more impressive buybacks and share retirement plans announced, although its shares fell 8% because of losses.  Mirant’s total return plan is some $4.6 Billion, which includes $1 Billion in open market purchases and a $ 1Billion accelerated buyback plan.  This has been under review for the Special Situation Investing Newsletter.

Avocent Corp. (NASDAQ:AVCT) added 3 million shares to its stock repurchase program; Avocent has repurchased 11.2 million shares of the 12 million shares previously approved. The buyback equates to $75 million more in buybacks if completed, compared to a $1.25 Billion market cap and it represents about 8 days of trading volume.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts (NYSE:HOT) raised its dividend and added $1 Billion to share buybacks, compared to a $10.5 Billion market cap.  This one has also been under review for the Special Situation Investing Newsletter.

Assured Guaranty Ltd. (NYSE:AGO) approved a new share repurchaseprogram for up to 2 million of Assured’s common shares, which is about$40 million of stock compared to $1.37 Billion in market cap and about2.5 days worth of trading volume.

H&E Equipment Services,Inc. (NASDAQ:HEES) authorized a stock repurchase program for up to $100million in common stock through December 31, 2008; represents almost 6million shares and about 9-days of average volume; market cap is $675million.

CB Richard Ellis Group, Inc. (NYSE:CBG) announced ashare repurchase program of up to $500 million, which is roughly 25million shares and almost 6-times average daily volume; market cap of$4.6 Billion.

Teradyne, Inc. (NYSE:TER) authorized a new StockRepurchase Program and is permitted to spend an aggregate of $400million to repurchase shares of its common stock.  The company’s marketcap is $2.2 Billion, and this represents some 33 million shares oralmost 8-times average daily volume.

Despite a crummy market reception to its earnings report, Cisco Systems(NASDAQ:CSCO) repurchased some 96 million shares at an average of$31.28 during the quarter.

Family Dollar (NYSE:FDO) announced a $150 million share buyback plan.

RedwoodTrust, Inc. (NYSE:RWT) authorized a repurchase of up to 5 millionshares of common stock, which replaces a previous Board authorizationunder which Redwood purchased 7,455,000 shares of its own stock fromSeptember 1997 to November 1999.

Laboratory Corp. of America(NYSE: LH) authorized a new stock buyback plan for up to $500,000,000of its Common Stock, and it has repurchased $131.0 million of stockduring the fourth quarter and has $198.2 million remainingauthorization under the existing share repurchase plan.

Vignette(NASDAQ:VIGN) has extended the share repurchase program it began inNovember, 2006. Vignette has already purchased $75 million of commonstock under its initial program, which equates to roughly 14 percent ofshares outstanding.  It has approved an extension of an additional $75million in stock buybacks.

Is this all of the share buybacks? Ofcourse not, but this is a list of some of the key buyback and sharerepurchase announcements from this week.  There was another huge listof major companies still buying back stock the week before as well, andyou can access the full list here.

Jon C. Ogg
November 9, 2007

Jon Ogg produces the Special Situation Investing Newsletterthat covers special pending and unannounced share buybacks,recapitalizations, restructurings, buyout candidates, activist investoractivity, turnarounds, and industry de-mergers.

One week from today, and possible over the coming weekend, we should start seeing many more companies announce "Partnering with VMware" or "Supplying VMware" or "Strikes key partners for virtualization" and the like.  Next week from September 11 to September 13 is the VMWORLD 2007 Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, and the roster is a Who’s Who in Techland.  There is also a Technology Day symposium ahead of it. 

Keynote speakers here will be from such tech heavyweights as John Chambers of Cisco Systems (CSCO), Patrick Gelsinger of Intel Corp. (INTC), and Hector Ruiz of Advanced Micro (AMD).  Other sponsors are major tech giants like Dell (DELL), H-P (HPQ), NEC, IBM (IBM), and of course the parent EMC (EMC).

Network Appliances (NTAP) is also a sponsor, and it already issued its press release to signal its involvement.

Some of the gold sponsors that are not quite as prominent are BEA Systems (BEAS), Brocade (BRCD), EDS (EDS), Emulex (ELX), Sun Microsystems (JAVA).  Further down the list of sponsors and exhibitors are BMC Software (BMC), Avocent (AVCT), CA (CA), Citrix Systems (CTXS) (which also recently made a virtualization buyout of XenSource), Novell (NOVL), Patni Computer Systems Ltd. (PTI), QLogic (QLGC), Microsoft (MSFT), Symantec (SYMC), and more.

What is interesting is that this virtualization conference includes almost all of VMware’s key competitors.  So they are not blocking out competitors, at least not this year.  For whatever it is worth, there are many overlaps out there in what would be deemed partners and competitors.  It has XenSource, Microsoft, Symantec, and others. 

It also sold out of sponsor and exhibitor opportunities some time ago.  Here is a full list of exhibitors.  It is probably safe to assume that many more virtualization partnerships will be coming ahead of, out of, and after this key industry event.

Stock Tickers: VMW, EMC, CSCO, INTC, AMD, DELL, HPQ, NTAP, IBM, BEAS, BRCD, EDS, ELX, JAVA, SUNW, BMC, AVCT, PTI, CA, CTXS, NOVL, QLGC, MSFT, SYMC

Jon C. Ogg
September 4, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at jonogg@247wallst.com; he produces the 24/7 Wall St. Special Situation Investing Newsletter and he does not own securities in the companies he covers.