Zack Buckley, who manages Buckley Capital, was speaking about the negative value case today at the Value Investing Congress. In his speech he called this a Sell ahead of its IPO lockup expiration date which iw only two weeks away. At issue is that some 31 million shares or so will suddenly be available for sale.

Buckley also said that venture backers as well as the chief financial officer and chief executive officer have sold off about 10% of their holdings lately. While the lockup expiration creates an overhang in the stock, Buckley also talked about how Splunk has a weak operating model that does not distinguish between product offerings in a highly competitive environment.

As far as just how negative Buckley is, he said that he could see the stock value drop by 65% to 85%. Keep in mind that its market cap is about $3.4 billion as of now. Splunk shares are down about 4% at $35.30 against a post-IPO range of $25.15 to $39.75.

It is worth noting that Splunk was not just a hot IPO. It was sizzling. The company priced 13.5 million shares at a price of $17 per share, but the first range was $8 to $10 per share and then it was raised to $11 to $13 per share before going off at the higher price. The moist recent short interest report as of September 14 from NASDAQ showed that some 2.66 million shares were short and that represented 4 days to cover at the time.

JON C. OGG

The three major U.S. stock indexes opened higher this morning and were trending lower on stagnant unemployment reports and slightly higher inflation from Europe (our coverage here). The Chicago Fed PMI index also came in a bit lower than expected although it still indicates a modest expansion in the economy (our coverage here). Fed chairman Bernanke’s long-awaited remarks from Jackson Hole did not promise an expected new round of easing and that sent markets down to their lowest point of the day (our coverage here). Then a rumor surfaced that the ECB is still considering a yield band target as part of a bond buying program, and stocks ticked up to their highest point of the day before giving a little of the gain back just after noon.

The U.S. dollar index is lower today, now down 0.51% at 81.277. The GSCI commodity index is down fractionally today at 666.96, with commodities prices mostly higher and corn falling below $8.00/bushel again. WTI crude oil is trading up 1.7% today, at $96.24/barrel. Brent crude trades higher at $114.32/barrel. Natural gas is up 1.24% today to $2.782/thousand cubic feet. Gold is trading at $1,682.80/ounce, up 1.6% so far today.

At about 2:00 p.m. today, the DJIA is up more than 77 points to 13,077.77 (0.59%), the NASDAQ has risen more than 14 points (0.47%) to 3,062.98, and the S&P 500 is up 0.44% or about 6 points to 1,405.60.

There were several analyst upgrades and downgrades today, including Corning Inc. (NYSE: GLW) raised to ‘outperform’ with a target price of $16 at Oppenheimer; Spectra Energy Corp. (NYSE: SE) cut to ‘equal weight’ with a target price of $30 at Barclays Capital; Toronto-Dominion Bank (NYSE: TD) cut to ‘neutral’ at Credit Suisse; Garmin Ltd. (NASDAQ: GRMN) started as ‘outperform’ at Wells Fargo; and ArcelorMittal (NYSE: MT) started as ‘equal weight’ at Morgan Stanley.

Some companies that reported earnings since markets closed last night and have recent share price changes today include Omnivision Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: OVTI) are up 5.1% at $16.72; SAIC Inc. (NYSE: SAI) is up 4.3% at $12.32; Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. (NYSE: STP) is up 1.3% at $0.91; and Zumiez Inc. (NASDAQ: ZUMZ) is down 9.8% at $29.05.

Earnings releases scheduled before markets open on Tuesday morning include Campbell Soup Co. (NYSE: CPB), Hanwha Solarone Co. Ltd. (NASDAQ: HSOL), and Smithfield Foods Inc. (NYSE: SFD).

Some standouts from today include the following stocks:

Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) is down 4.9% at $18.16 after hitting a new post-IPO low of $18.08 earlier today. The social network company’s stock was downgraded today on concerns over remaining share lockup exits. More coverage here.

Splunk Inc. (NASDAQ: SPLK) is up 14.4% at $34.89. The enterprise software company beat earnings estimates and raised guidance for the current quarter.

Saba Software Inc. (NASDAQ: SABA) is up 12.3% at $8.94. The HR cloud-based software maker continues to be considered a takeover target following the acquisition of Kenexa Corp. (NYSE: KNXA) by International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM).

Stay tuned for Tuesday. We have noted the following events on the schedule (all times Eastern):

• 9:00 a.m. – Institute for Supply Management PMI
• 10:00 a.m. – Construction spending
• 11:30 a.m. – 3- and 6-month bill auctions

Have a great holiday weekend!

Paul Ausick

These are Friday’s market winners and loser.

Biggest Winners

Shares of Splunk, Inc. (NASDAQ: SPLK) are up 17.93% to $35.97 on trading volume of 1.9 million shares. While the data-mining software company reported a second-quarter loss of 1 cent a share, it was better than Wall Street expectations of a 4-cent-a-share loss. The 52-week high is $37.57.

Shares of StemCells Inc. (NASDAQ: STEM) are up 12.24% to $2.20 on trading volume of  5 million shares. The biotechnology company’s stock is rallying before it announces results of a clinical durg trial to treat chronic spinal cord injury. The 52-week high is $2.55.

Biggest Loser

Shares of Facebook Inc.  (NASDAQ: FB) are down 3.92% to $18.34 on trading volume of 25.5 million shares. BMO Capital has cut its price target to $15. Before Friday, the 52-week low was $18.75.

Samuel Weigley

Follow him on Twitter: SWeigley

The company is based in Pleasanton, Calif., and claims 1,450 employees. Workday just added Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) as a customer of its cloud-based personnel management systems, according to a report from Bloomberg. In its filing the company claims to have 325 customers, including Kimberly-Clark Corp. (NYSE: KMB) and Flextronics International Ltd. (NASDAQ: FLEX).

Workday was founded in 2005 by former employees of PeopleSoft, which was acquired for about $10 billion by Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL) in that same year. Workday competes with Oracle, SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) and other established vendors of business and enterprise software for managing human relations and payroll functions.

Other recent enterprise IPOs include Palo Alto Networks Inc. (NYSE: PANW) and ServiceNow Inc. (NYSE: NOW), both of which are trading above their IPO prices, and Splunk Inc. (NASDAQ: SPLK), currently trading down about 9%.

Principal Workday shareholders include the company’s officers and directors and venture firms Greylock Partners and New Enterprise Associates. Shares outstanding as of July 31st totaled 137.54 million, assuming all preferred stock is converted to class B common stock.

Following the IPO the company expects that its total authorized capital stock will total 1 billion shares, including 750 million shares of class A common stock, 240 million shares of class B common stock, and 10 million shares of preferred stock. Class B shares receive 10 votes per share, while class A shares get 1 vote per share. The class B shares will be held by approximately 630 shareholders. As of July 31, no class A shares are outstanding.

The two cofounders together own a total of about 100 million class B shares, with David Duffield a cofounder and co-CEO, owning 73.46 million class B shares by himself.

Lead underwriters for the offering include Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.

The full filing is available here.

Paul Ausick

Monday

Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. (NYSE: STP) is not exactly important to the solar sector any longer, but it is important to know whether or not the company is doomed after it disclosed fraud against the company. Estimates are -$0.47 EPS and $472.15 million in sales.

Tiffany & Co. (NYSE: TIF) is down over 25% from its highs still but this will be watched closely.  Estimates for the July quarter are $0.74 EPS and $891.6 million in sales.

Wednesday

Fresh Market Inc. (NASDAQ: TFM) has enjoyed what we would say is ‘the Whole Foods halo-effect’ and now we will see if it can live up to high expectations after having doubled off of its lows.  Estimates are $0.27 EPS and $308 million in revenue.

H.J. Heinz Co. (NYSE: HNZ) is expected to report $0.80 EPS and $2.84 billion in sales.

Joy Global Inc. (NYSE: JOY) is expected to report $1.88 EPS and $1.42 billion. Keep in mind that shares had been cut in almost half during the sell-off during the first half but they have recovered in the last 30 days or so.

Pandora Media, Inc. (NYSE: P) is expected to turn in earnings of -$0.03 EPS on almost $101 million in revenue.  Last quarter the online radio provider managed to post a loss of only half as bad as expected.

Thursday

Ciena Corp. (NASDAQ: CIEN) is set to report Thursday and its shares have so far been somewhat insulated from the woes of Europe and worries over telecom and communications equipment spending. Estimates are -$0.02 EPS and $473.5 million in revenue.

OmniVision Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: OVTI) will be closely watched since it is supposed to be an Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone supply winner. Estimates are $0.22 EPS and $243.77 million.  It was treated harshly after missing its last earnings expectations.

Splunk, Inc. (NASDAQ: SPLK) has managed to hold up well with its real-time operational intelligence for data management inside enterprises. It has only been public since April so this will be its first full quarter report as a public company.  Estimates are -$0.04 EPS and $39.8 billion in revenue.

As a note, these estimates and dates can change and some may have already changed.

JON C. OGG

Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ: AMGN) raised to Buy at Lazard.

American Tower Corp. (NYSE: AMT) cut to Neutral at Credit Suisse.

Applied Materials Inc. (NASDAQ: AMAT) raised to Buy at Goldman Sachs.

Coach Inc. (NYSE: COH) raised to Buy at Canaccord Genuity.

Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) started as Neutral at UBS.

Flextronics International Ltd. (NASDAQ: FLEX) raised to Buy at Goldman Sachs.

Gilead Sciences Inc. (NASDAQ: GILD) cut to Neutral at Lazard.

Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) started as Sell at UBS, but this was also one of the six cheapest DJIA components this morning, if you trust analysts.

Knight Capital Group Inc. (NYSE: KCG) cut to Underperform at KBW.

Leap Wireless International Inc. (NASDAQ: LEAP) cut to Underperform at Baird.

NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTAP) started as Buy at UBS.

Sanmina-SCI Corp. (NASDAQ: SANM) cut to Sell at Goldman Sachs.

Splunk Inc. (NASDAQ: SPLK) started as Outperform at Credit Suisse.

Veolia Environnement SA (NYSE: VE) cut to Equal Weight at Morgan Stanley.

Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: VRTX) started as Buy at Lazard.

VIVUS Inc. (NASDAQ: VVUS) raised to Buy at Lazard.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) started as Overweight at Stephens.

If you enjoyed the top analyst upgrades and downgrades, you can join our free email newsletter that includes analyst summaries each morning sent right to your inbox. We also cover top issues such as IPOs, special financial exclusives, mergers and more. Sign up in the box below.

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JON C. OGG

Later this morning, travel site Kayak Software Software Inc. (NASDAQ: KYAK) will issue its first shares at $26/share. At least one analyst thinks the shares are worth as much as $32, which implies a fat 23% gain that could grow materially as the day goes on.

Compare these IPOs with the first offering from Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB). In that one, Facebook insisted on a share price that would push the company’s valuation above $100 billion. And Facebook got the price it wanted, while early shareholders whined about not getting that big first-day bump. Lead underwriter Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) reportedly had to put up its own cash to support the IPO price by the end of Facebook’s own trading day.

Or compare the April IPO of Splunk Inc. (NASDAQ: SPLK), which went out at $17/share and closed its first day of trading at more than double the initial price.

Which company did the best? Arguably Facebook did because it got the highest possible IPO price for its shares and the money all went into the company’s bank account. Palo Alto Networks, Kayak, and Splunk are giving underwriters and their favored clients a fat gift. Discount teen retailer Five Below Inc. (NASDAQ: FIVE), which held its IPO yesterday, went out at $17/share and closed at $26.50, up 56%.

Its pretty easy to see why underwriters and the favorite customers like the big-bounce IPO instead of the one that is priced more favorably for the company. But why companies like Palo Alto Networks and Splunk — and presumably Kayak — don’t squawk is less obvious.

Paul Ausick

This morning the company announced a secondary offering of 11.74 million shares at $28.25 per share, a discount of about 3.2% to last night’s closing price. The underwriters have a 30-day overallotment option on another 1.76 million shares. All the shares included in the sale are being offered by existing shareholders, and all the proceeds from the offering will go to those shareholders.

According to Splunk:

As part of the offering, all selling stockholders have agreed to lock-up agreements that will extend the initial public offering lock-up period on 50% of their shares until 180 days after this offering.

That’s nice. But these sellers made out like bandits. The company got $17 a share because the underwriters mispriced the IPO. Then just a few months later, Splunk’s venture firms, company executives and underwriters sell their shares for $28.25. Pretty sweet deal.

Splunk’s shares were down 0.65% in premarket trading this morning, at $29.00 in a post-IPO range of $25.15 to $37.57.

Paul Ausick

Bazaarvoice, Inc. (NASDAQ: BV) has filed to sell up to 1.7 million shares for the company and up to 6.8 million shares for backers, holders, and insiders. The book-runners are Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank Securities, and Credit Suisse Securities (USA); co-managers are BMO Capital Markets, Pacific Crest Securities, and Piper Jaffray. This underwriting group will have a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 1,275,000 shares of common stock from Bazaarvoice.

Elli Mae, Inc. (NYSE: ELLI) is unloading more shares close to the top.  Some 3.101 million shares are being sold at a price of $17.00 per share after a $17.03 close and versus a 52-week range of $3.46 to $17.62. Ellie Mae is offering 3,000,000 shares of common stock and certain of its directors and executive officers are offering 101,638 shares of common stock. The book-running managers are William Blair & Company and JMP Securities; co-managers are Needham & Company, Oppenheimer & Co., D.A. Davidson, and Wunderlich Securities. Ellie Mae has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 465,245 shares.

Energy Transfer Partners LP (NYSE: ETP) is a $10.5 billion MLP and it has filed for a 13.5 million unit secondary offering that will raise close to $600 million.  The common units are indicated down 4.3% at $43.99 against a 52-week range of $38.08 to $51.00. The book-runners are BofA Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Morgan Stanley, UBS Investment Bank, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and Wells Fargo Securities; co-managers are Raymond James and RBC Capital Markets.  An overallotment option of up 2.025 million units is being granted to the syndicate.

Gas Natural Inc. (NYSEMKT: EGAS) is a natural gas utility company serving approximately 70,000 customers in seven states and it has priced a public offering of 700,000 shares of its common stock at $10.10 per share.  The offering is for shares owned by Chairman/CEO Richard M. Osborne and the Company will not receive any proceeds from the sale. He has also granted Janney Montgomery Scott, the underwriter, a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 100,000 shares of common stock on the same terms and conditions to cover over-allotments.  How nice of him. What is interesting is that this is at a premium to Wednesday’s closing bell price of $9.92 but shares had been at $10.60 before the disclosure of the coming sale.

Pacific Ethanol, Inc. (NASDAQ: PEIX) was looking like it had good news after spending $20 million to acquire another one-third interest in operating plants.  As a result the ethanol producer is getting an extended credit maturity from 2013 to 2016 and a $5 million boost.  Then the company issued a second release that it intends to offer units consisting of shares of common stock and warrants in an underwritten public offering.  Shares are down a whopping 31% at $0.36 this morning but the price is low enough that most do not even track the company any longer.

Splunk, Inc. (NASDAQ: SPLK) has come well of its highs since its IPO and now the company is prepping to unload shares into a lock-up expiration.  This registration statement was for up to $300 million and all of the shares will be sold by existing shareholders (backers, holders, and insiders).  Book-running managers are listed as Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse Securities, J.P. Morgan Securities, and BofA Merrill Lynch; UBS Securities, Pacific Crest Securities, and Cowen and Company will be the co-managers.

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JON C. OGG

The US dollar index slipped today, now down -0.25% at 82.833. The GSCI commodity index is down about -1.2% at 596.20, with commodities prices generally lower on the weak economic news. WTI crude oil closed down -1.5% at $83.23/barrel, ending the week down -8%. Brent crude trades down -3.1% at $98.70/barrel (more coverage here). Natural gas fell -3.9% today to $2.33/thousand cubic feet. Gold was today’s big winner, settling up 3.7% today, at $1,622.10/ounce, for the yellow metal’s biggest single-day jump since last August.

The unofficial closing bells put the DJIA down more than 276 points to 12,117.05 (-2.23%), the NASDAQ fell nearly 80 points (-2.82%) to 2,747.48, and the S&P 500 fell -2.47% or more than 32 points to 1,278.03.

There were several analyst upgrades and downgrades today, including Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) started as ‘outperform’ at R.W. Baird, Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) cut to ‘hold’ at Jefferies; Nordstrom Inc. (NYSE: JWN) raised to ‘buy’ at Nomura and started as ‘outperform’ at RBC; Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) raised to ‘overweight’ at JPMorgan; and The Blackstone Group LP (NYSE: BX) raised to the ‘Conviction Buy’ list at Goldman Sachs.

Earnings reports since markets closed last night have been scarce, but here are some price changes for reporting companies as of the last half hour of trading today: China Ming Yang Wind Power Group Ltd. (NYSE: MY) is down -6.2% at $1.36; OmniVision Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: OVTI) is down -19.1% at $13.09; RealD Inc. (NYSE: RLD) is down -5.5% at $11.31; and Vera Bradley Inc. (NASDAQ: VRA) is down -8.9% at $19.93 after posting a new 52-week low of $19.52 earlier today.

On Monday, we are scheduled to get earnings reports from American Superconductor Corp. (NASDAQ: AMSC), Chimera Investment Corp. (NYSE: CIM), Dollar General Corp. (NYSE: DG), Shanda Games Ltd. (NASDAQ: GAME), and Conn’s Inc. (NASDAQ: CONN).

Other standouts from today include the following stocks:

Groupon Inc. (NASDAQ: GRPN) is down -9.3% at $9.65, after posting a new post-IPO low of $9.53 earlier today. The Internet coupon site’s insider lock-up period ended today. More coverage here.

Exeter Resource Corp. (AMEX: XRA) is up 10.4% at $2.01. The junior miner is one of many gold and silver mining stocks that posted big gains today. More coverage here.

Splunk Inc. (NASDAQ: SPLK) is down -15.3% at $27.58 after posting a new post-IPO low of $27.31 earlier today. The data analytics company posted its first report as a public company, and beat estimates on revenues and the size of the EPS loss. Even the forecast for the current quarter and the full year beat estimates. Some days you just can’t win.

Stay tuned for Monday. We have noted the following events on the schedule for Tuesday (all times Eastern):

• 10:00 a.m. – Factory orders
• 11:30 a.m. – 3- and 6-month bill auctions

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Have a great weekend!

Paul Ausick