Qwest, Seacoast Banking Corp. of Florida: Early Volume Plays
NEW YORK (
) --
Qwest
(Q)
is one of several stocks trading near $5 poised to move on above-average volume Thursday after the telecom company agreed to a buyout that values shares at a 15% premium.
shares were up 5.3% to $5.52 in the premarket session after
CenturyTel
(CTL) - Get Report
agreed to acquire the company.
Qwest shareholders will receive 0.1664 a share of CenturyTel for each share of Qwest common stock they own at closing, reflecting an enterprise value for Qwest of about $22.4 billion, including the assumption of $11.8 billion of Qwest debt. Qwest is being valued at $6.02 a CenturyTel share, a premium to Qwest shareholders of about 15% over Qwest's closing stock price Wednesday of $5.24.
The three-month average daily volume for Qwest is 26.51 million, according to Yahoo! Finance.
Elsewhere,
Seacoast Banking Corp. of Florida
(SBCF) - Get Report
rallied by 75 cents, or 38.5%, to $2.70 in the premarket session after the company said its first-quarter loss narrowed to 4 cents a share from 73 cents a share in the year-ago quarter, coming in better than the average analyst estimate that called for a loss of 14 cents a share.
Seacoast Banking Corp. of Florida
posted first-quarter revenue of $23.9 million, up 3.2% from a year earlier to top the consensus target of $21.8 million. The 50-day average daily volume for Seacoast Banking is 516,000, according to the
Nasdaq
.
Digital Ally
(DGLY) - Get Report
was also poised to trade higher after the company said late Wednesday it has received international contracts from South America and Middle East. The stock closed Wednesday at $1.82 but rose nearly 10% in the after-market session. The 50-day average daily volume for Digital Ally is 64,000.
Vical
(VICL)
jumped by 35 cents, or 9.9%, to $3.88 in the premarket session after the company said its TransVax cytomegalovirus (CMV) vaccine elicited sustained increases in cellular and antibody immune responses compared with placebo through the final 12-month follow-up in an ongoing Phase 2 trial in hematopoietic cell transplant recipients.
A report on the full evaluation of viral load and clinical endpoints will come in the third quarter, Vical said. The 50-day average daily volume for Vical is 378,000.
-- Written by Robert Holmes in Boston
.
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