Verigy Limited (NASDAQ: VRGY) is up 11% premarket to $14.10, relative to a 52-week range of $7.48-$15.09. The company’s board of directors recently determined that a buyout offer from Advantest corporation (NYSE: ATE) was preferable to another deal offered by LTX-Credence.

Vodaphone Group Plc. (NADAQ: VOD) is up 4.6% premarket to $28.97, relative to a 52-week range of $18.21-$32.70.

Xenoport, Inc. (NASDAQ: XNPT) is down nearly 13% premarket to $5.82, relative to a 52-week range of $5.86-$11.82. The company will stop experimental treatment of a heartburn medication.

Depomed, Inc. (NASDAQ: DEPO) is down 30% premarket to $8.10, relative to a 52-week range of $2.32-$7.35. The FDA had just approved treatment of the pharma company’s neuralgia treatment.

NPS Pharmaceuicals (NASDAQ: NPSP) is up 25% this morning to $9.58, well above a 52-week range of $3.10-$8.30. The company had recently reported successful phase III trials of a short bowel system treatment.

Mattson Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: MTSN) is down 5% premarket to $2.20, relative to a 52-week range of $1.93-$5.52.

Xenoport, Inc. (NASDAQ: XNPT) is up 8.3% to $8.45, relative to a 52-week range of $5.66-$20.48.

Sanofi-Aventis (NYSE: SNY) telegraphed that it is interested in acquisitions last week and Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ: AMGN) telegraphed ‘some’ of the same in June.  With everyone looking for the next buyout target, we gave a full rundown of these to review some potential acquisition targets along with data on partnerships and more.

Affymetrix Inc. (NASDAQ: AFFX) is an outright guidance issue today and is one of the worst of the lot in stocks. The company lowered its expected revenue guidance due to issues on delayed purchases and budget cuts, but it also blamed a weak Euro for its mess.  The company is into consumables and systems for genetic analysis in the life sciences and clinical healthcare markets.  Shares are down almost 24% at $4.23 on over 4.2 million shares (more than triple-normal volume.  The stock also hit a new 52-week low of $3.95 so its new range for the year is $3.95 to $10.06.

Corcept Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: CORT) hasn’t had formal news since last week’s announcement that it has completes enrollment in Phase 3 Cushing’s Syndrome study with the end-of year time frame for its data presentations.  Much of today looks just like regaining yesterday’s drop.  This is up on very thin volume versus its average of just under 100,000 shares in a day: up 9.8% at $3.24 on only about 25,000 shares.  The 52-week range is $0.75 to $3.93.

Curis, Inc. (NASDAQ: CRIS) appears to be some added give-back of yesterday morning’s gains.  The move had been based initially upon a Phase I triggering a $3 million milestone payment under Hsp90 collaboration with Debiopharm.  Shares are down 5.5% at $1.37 on about 240,000 shares.  This is also thin volume versus about 700,000 shares per day.  The 52-week range is $1.28 to $3.70.

CytRx Corporation (NASDAQ: CYTR) has not seen news and is down for a second day.  The speculative oncology sector has another loser with shares down 7.6% at $0.65 on about 752,000 shares.  Average volume is just over 1 million shares and the 52-week range is $0.62 to $1.72.  Keep in mind that the $0.62 is the low from this morning… another 52-week low.

Human Genome Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: HGSI) is up big today, but not on any news from the tape.  This has been hoped for and thought of as a possible takeover stalker (noted in Amgen-Sonofi piece).  Shares are up 5.5% at $23.05 on just over 4 million shares.  The average volume is 4.96 million shares and the 52-week range is $2.25 to $34.49.

NexMed, Inc. (NASDAQ: NEXMD) is almost counter-intuitive.  The specialty CRO received a NASDAQ letter dated yesterday from The NASDAQ Hearings Panel stating that it is now in compliance with listing standards.  Shares are down over 18% at $3.12 on 1.05 million shares.  Average volume is 225,000 shares and the 52-week range is $1.80 to $12.60.

Nymox Pharmaceutical Corporation (NASDAQ: NYMX) is down after the company said its injected investigational drug for prostate enlargement showed a reduction in patient urgency to urinate by 52% after three months versus palcebo in a follow-up Phase 3 trial.  Nymox is down 2.5% at $2.75 on 222,000 shares versus average volume of 125,000 shares.  Interestingly, this $2.64 low is also a 52-week low: $2.64 to $7.07 is its 52-week range.

Xenoport, Inc. (NASDAQ: XNPT) is getting whacked on news that it and GSK disclosed that their migraine drug gabapentin enacarbil failed a mid-stage trial because it failed to reach statistical significance.  This is one of the day’s worst and that $6.35 intra-day low price marks a new 52-week low.  Shares have been as high as $25.42 over the last year and the average volume is only about 719,000 shares.  In early afternoon trading, this one is down over 26% at $6.54 on over 5 million shares.

JON C. OGG

Twitter has, by most estimates, 100 million members, which makes it one of the largest social networks in the world. All major media companies are on Twitter and some have more than one million Twitter users.

24/7 Wall St. will look at the Twitter posts at Reuters Biz, WSJ, Financial Times, CNN Money, MarketWatch, CNBC, and 24/7 Wall St. each day to see which stocks are most frequently mentioned. It is clear that in this area of social media these tweet are a sign of which companies the Twitter universe is interested in. These financial sites are followed by a combined 625,000 Twitter users which makes them a sizeable sample of Wall St.’s interests. In some cases, we will publish the actual tweets from the sites.

Among the daily top trending  symbols on stock twitter aggregator StockTwits are Google Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG), STEC, Inc, (NASDAQ: STEC), Citigroup, Inc (NYSE: C), XenoPort, Inc (NASDAQ: XNPT), Hanmi Financial Corp (NASDAQ: HAFC), United Parcel Service, Inc (NYSE: UPS), and First Solar, Inc. (NASDAQ: FSLR).

CNN Money: What’s black & white & green all over? USA Today publisher Gannett posts big profit jump. Much of it was from cost cutting, but $GCI up 2%.

FT: Twitter builds on its character: The micro-blogger is determined to prove its potential for making money http://bit.ly/9RK8hg

CNBC: Google Results Jump but Don’t Beat ‘Whisper Number’ $GOOG #earnings http://bit.ly/cOIJny

MarketWatch: Bank of America earns $3.2 billion in first quarter; tops estimates http://on.mktw.net/a2Iaha

MarketWatch: GE profit drops nearly a third; EPS tops estimates http://on.mktw.net/aYOcb0

Reuters Biz: Mattel surprises with quarterly profit http://link.reuters.com/jex97j

Reuters Biz: Sony Ericsson makes surprise 1st quarter profit http://link.reuters.com/bav97j

Douglas A. McIntyre

Douglas A. McIntyre

We have included the moves as they have been seen in late-morning trading as well the news and a link to more data on each were applicable if these were more broad stories.

Abraxis BioScience, Inc. (NASDAQ: ABII) is scoring a win in the war against lung cancer.  Its ABRAXANE showed high promise in combination with existing treatments for lung cancer in key Phase III  studies.  In late-morning trade, Abraxis is up over 28% at $21.18 and it hit a high of $54.03 today.  We have already seen 5-times normal volume.

StemCells Inc. (NASDAQ: STEM) is up on news of a rat model patent award in the UK.  This is apparently a novel stem cell patent despite the animal model.  Shares are up 2.5% at $1.24 and we have already seen almost 2 million shares trade versus a 2.1 million share average day.

Xenoport, Inc. (NASDAQ: XNPT) is up 4.5% at $9.57 on no real news seen.  Xenoport is the one that was clocked last month after failing to win FDA support of its restless leg syndrome and after half of its workforce was forced into national employee morale day for layoffs.  Still, if news is out we haven’t seen it today.

Lexicon Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: LXRX) took a beating of almost 10% to close at $1.28 yesterday due to its large securities offering.  Shares have recouped over 2% of that today and the stock is at $1.31 on already 150% of normal trading volume.

On February 17, the FDA rejected a restless leg syndrome drug being developed by XenoPort and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) because of a potential link to cancer found in rats. Six research firms downgraded the stock including DeutscheBank and Citigroup. XenoPort’s stock dropped from $20 to under $7 in a day.

To make shareholders feel better Ronald W. Barrett, Ph.D., XenoPort’s chief executive officer said, “We are fortunate to have a number of product candidates in clinical development as well as several other advanced preclinical compounds that can be developed.” But, there is apparently not enough potential in the candidates to keep the staff intact.

Dr. Barrett made $1.9 million last year, according to the company’s proxy. He had to fire a lot of people to cover that.

Douglas A. McIntyre

We have compiled details on each stock with certain expectations and relevant data on each.

AMAG Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMAG) was hit very hard with shares going from $45 to $35 before a late Friday recovery.  The drop was due to a boutique analyst cutting the stock over concerns that Feraheme patients are being hospitalized with severe allergic reaction events.  After the close on Friday the company defended itself showing that the risks here are very low and may not be any different than previously thought.   Shares closed at $37.77 but were up at $39 on almost 100,000 shares in the after-hours session.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is going to be one to watch this week, if for no other reason than its stock chart.  Late in January, just as in December, Google fell under the 50-day moving average.  We are looking for some resolution here because it is at a classic right side of a head and shoulders pattern yet again.  By Wednesday the stock will have spent close to the same number of days as in the past before challenging that 50-Day moving average.  In short, Apple will need to rise or more technicians are going to join in the call from our affiliate Adam Hewison looking for $182 or much lower.  On the valuation front, Apple is still #5 on our own Real-Time 500 measuring companies by free market capitalization at $177+ billion.

Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU) is on deck with earnings this week, and we are going to get to hear  from the Chinese search giant about just how much Google’s China-War is helping the company.  This stock closed up 1.8% on Friday at $448.80 and that was almost $10 off its lows of the day.  was up ahead of next week’s earnings, so maybe China’s loan halts are not affecting quite everyone.  Shares were up 1.85% at $449.00 right before the close.  For such a bad week in the market, Baidu closed up 9% this week.  This is the one to watch for earnings movers this week, and we’d expect those light volume days of stock options to get more active.  The estimates today are $1.68 EPS and $180 million in revenues, although this also marks its fiscal-2009 report.

Denny’s Corp. (NASDAQ: DENN) was a mystery move on Friday with a 5.8% gain to $2.54.  Some are betting that the casual dining chain will be a winner from its Super Bowl advertisement this year.  It is just as easy to show that it is a waste of money considering its low cash and declining sales.  There is one other issue, and that is that in late-January Oak Street Capital Management, Soundpost Advisors, and Lyrical Partners formed a joint filing group collectively owning 4,850,943 shares, about 5.02%.  At the time, they did not have any plans or proposals for ‘Lenny’s.’

In the Land of M&A, we have to watch this Air Products & Chemicals Inc. (NYSE: APD) $60 cash buyout of Airgas Inc. (NYSE: ARG).  ARG closed at $60.96 and traded as high as $62.82 because the company had already turned down higher offers from the company.  Jefferies believes a higher deal price is very likely, and $68 was not ruled out in that analysis.  Our own math looks more like a $65 buyout price, market conditions permitting.

There is another deal to ‘potentially watch for’ from Micron Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: MU).  Last week’s rumor mill has the DRAM giant considering making a play for Numonyx, which is the flash memory spin-off of Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) and STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM) formed in 2008.  Micron has been in a state of change for some time, and it might make sense to double its efforts away from mostly DRAM.

Gilead Sciences Inc. (NASDAQ: GILD) has two issues on deck this coming week.   The company has a presentation at BIO CEO on February 9 and there is a pending February 13 date for a FDA decision on its Cayston antibiotic for cystic fibrosis.  This stock has been very quiet over the last two years and at $46.38 it is in the middle of its $40.62 to $53.03 trading range over the last 52-weeks. With many products on the market and a $41 billion market cap, it takes a lot to move the needle here… just do not bother telling that to those who made big options bets on Friday in the Feb-2010 CALLS: $47 saw 15,464 contracts trade versus an open interest of 8,084 contracts; the $49 strike saw 16,371 contracts trade versus an open interest of 9,238 contracts.

XenoPort, Inc. (Nasdaq: XNPT) has a February 9 FDA decision date for its GSK1838262/XP13512 a.k.a. Horizant treatment for moderate-to-severe primary restless legs syndrome with partner GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK).  This is a big deal, although it is far from a final resolution.  Options have traded based on this event.  Keep in mind that GSK is a risk now because it has told the company that it is proposing to cease discovery research in certain neuroscience areas, including depression and pain and will disclose this development plan at a future date.  Full details and background at at BioHealthInvestor.com.

You are invited to join our free daily email distribution list to hear about top analyst upgrades and downgrades, IPOs and secondary offerings, ongoing day trader and options trader alerts, stock and market rumors, Buffett and guru investor news, M&A and more.

JON C. OGG

• Amgen Inc. (AMGN) is up about 13% on positive Phase III trial results; Novartis Inc. (NYSE: NVS) may be affected negatively.
• MSC Software Corp. (Nasdaq: MSCS) shares are up as Symphony Technology placed a bid on the company for $360 million.
• DryShips Inc. (Nasdaq: DRYS) scored a Credit Suisse upgrade on the stock with close a 5% gain.
• ARYx Therapeutics Inc. (Nasdaq: ARYX) is getting halved after the company’s experimental anticoagulant failed in a late-stage study.
• xenoport Inc. (NASDAQ: XNPT) shares were down strongly after hours on a secondary offering.  Ditto on Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: ARNA).
• BPZ Resources Inc. (NYSE: BPZ) is rising after it announced a credit line that will be used to help it fund projects in Peru.

-The 24/7 Wall St. Team

• Brookfield Asset Management (BAM) Started as Buy at TD.
• Cephalon (CEPH) Started as Buy at Piper Jaffray.
• Cypress Bioscience (CYPB) Started as Buy at Piper Jaffray.
• FuelCell Energy (FCEL) Started as Overweight at Thomas Weisel.
• Kroger (KR) Raised to Neutral from Underweight at JPMorgan.
• Safeway (SWY) Raised to Neutral from Underweight at JPMorgan.
• Xenoport (XNPT) Started as Buy at Piper Jaffray.

Jon C. Ogg
December 16, 2008

Xenoport  (XNPT) New drug fails in study. Drops to $17.90 from 52-week high of $66.34.

Sierra Wireless (SWIR) Will be buying Wavecom. Wall St. hates deal. Falls to $5,42 from 52-week high of $21.18.

Palm (PALM) Smartphone also-ran revised quarter down. Falls to $1.14 from 52-week high of $8.94.

Douglas A. McIntyre