Winners & Losers

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Monday's Tech Winners & Losers

TSC Staff

Tech stocks were flat Monday, despite a buyout of PC maker Gateway(GTW).

The No. 4 U.S. PC maker soared 50.4% after a $710 million buyout offer by Acer. The Taiwanese company will pay $1.90 a share, a premium of 57% over Friday's closing price of $1.21 a share. Gateway shares closed up 61 cents to $1.82.

The buyout did not have much of an effect on other leading computer makers. Dell(DELL) closed off 15 cents, or 0.5%, to $27.59. Apple(AAPL) shed $3.05, or 2.3%, to $132.25.

Shares of Rambus(RMBS) jumped 7.9% after the memory-chip maker said after the bell Friday that it had settled claims with all parties except one former employee after an internal probe into stock option backdating. The settlements, with present and former employees and directors of the company, total more than $6.5 million in cash and cash equivalents.

In exchange, the settling parties agreed to give up claims to upwards of 2.7 million stock options. The company continues to pursue claims against former Vice President of Human Resources Ed Larsen. Shares closed up $1.11 to $15.16.

Other chipmakers were not faring as well. Taiwan-based Macronix International(MXIC) lost 3.9% to $6.25, SanDisk(SNDK) lost 4% to $51.86, and MIPS Technologies(MIPS) closed off 3.9% to $7.85.

The Nasdaq 100 index, which includes components Apple and SanDisk, was 13.89 points lower, to 1947.49.

Qualcomm(QCOM) shares edged higher after the maker of wireless communications products announced it had bought back $1.1 billion in shares under an existing program authorized in May. The company said it has an additional $1.5 billion available under the buyback program, which has no expiration date. Shares closed up 35 cents, or 0.9%, to $38.58.

Superconductor Technology(SCON) soared 78.4% on heavy volume after it said it had entered negotiations with Hunchun BaoLi Communication, a Chinese push-to-talk handset maker, on a joint venture. The venture would involve making and marketing Superconductor's interference elimination solution for the Chinese market. Hunchun BaoLi last week made a $15 million investment in Superconductor, whose shares rallied $2.61 to $5.94 Monday.