Cree, Inc. (NASDAQ: CREE) closed up 9.65% at $30.57 on nearly 3-times normal volume with 9.3 million shares traded against a 52-week range of $23.03 to $31.34.

Veeco Instruments Inc. (NASDAQ: VECO) closed up 10.15% at $29.20 on about 3.3-times normal volume with 7 million shares traded against a 52-week range of $23.06 to $57.67.

Aixtron SE (NASDAQ: AIXG) closed up 9.97% at $16.43 on more than 4-times normal volume with 2.11 million shares traded versus a 52-week range of $12.49 to $44.96.

The full analysis, details of the phase-out, and 4 or 5 other LED shares on the move are available here at 24/7 Wall St.  A Veeco stock chart from stockcharts.com has been provided below.  Stock option trading was also extremely elevated in all three names, particularly in the speculative call options.

JON C. OGG

The 200-day moving average is $325.55 and the 50-day moving average is $339.34.  Google just closed today at $325.16 on above average trading volume of more than 18 million shares and its 52-week trading range is $235.56 to $364.90.

We previously noted ten reasons why Apple won’t pay a dividend any time soon.

Maybe you can use a tie-in for the Horsemen stocks of technology… Google is exhibiting severe chart weakness and it broke under $500 for the first time since last year.

JON C. OGG

3-year chart provided by stockcharts.com:

Late in the day on Wednesday we have already seen over 1.47 million shares trade and the gain is almost 16% at $2.94.  Shares also hit a new 52-week high today and the new range for the last year is $.19 to $3.13.  This appears to actually have been new all-time highs.

On Tuesday, June 14, 2011, Express-1 shares closed at $2.53 on 600,400 shares versus a $2.19 close on Monday.

What is odd is that even after the huge move, the market cap is only about $96 million.

What kicked off the move was a private equity firm’s founder taking over as CEO.  Reuters reported on Tuesday, “Entrepreneur and investor Bradley Jacobs and his private equity firm are to invest $150 million in Express-1 Expedited Solutions Inc., a third-party logistics provider, and aim to build “a multibillion-dollar” business over the next several years.”

United Rentals, Inc. (NYSE: URI) was founded by Bradley Jacobs and the hope is that he can create a repeat performance.

More details and a full background are here.

JON C. OGG

3:30 PM EST

The research causing the spike noted the following:

• Dell has been busily assembling a full IT stack aimed at re-aligning the company away from secularly less attractive legacy businesses (e.g., PC) and incrementally toward future growth in the enterprise.
• With Dell’s acquisitions of EqualLogic, Perot and Compellent (among others), Dell now has a beach head in three of the four primary layers of this stack – storage, servers and services.
• Networking is the one crucial piece that is missing, but Dell has some limited networking technology in-house.
• Dell has clearly been seeing success cross-selling Ethernet switching with servers and storage
• The company has $7B of net cash on hand prior to any additional raise, equal to 23% of its market cap.

The most important note is, “Not owning this technology puts Dell at risk of simply hopping from one commoditized business into another.” Still, the analyst noted that he has no knowledge of any discussions between or around Dell and Brocade, nor does he suggest that there are any discussion he is unaware of.

The research call is driving Brocade today.  At 11:10 AM EST shares are up 5.1% at $7.01 and shares hit a new 52-week high today at $7.20.  We have seen about 225% of normal trading volume as there have already been about 23.1 million shares traded and the day is not even half-way done.

Normally we would not cover one research report in detail.  The reason we do is that we have believed Brocade would be a target for many companies that want to stave off competition from Cisco, H-P, and a half-dozen other players.

If we had to make odds over any company which could or should acquire Brocade, Dell would be at the top of the list of companies which could benefit from such a deal.

JON C. OGG

Now this morning came news that The U.S. Department of Energy has selected Broadwind for a “multi-megawatt dynamamoter upgrade.”  It turns out that this is a $1.37 million award for the design and fabrication of a 5.8 mega-watt wind turbine gearbox for a dynamamoter at its National Wind Technology Center. 

Volume had been light but at 11:03 EST came the news story and at 11:12 AM EST we have shares up only about 1.7% at $1.79.  What is important is that shares first popped up by more than 8% to a high of $1.93.  We have now just surpassed 1.6 million shares and avaerage volume for a full day is only 1.2 million shares.

The news is important on the volume side, but the size of the contract is not likely going to be a real driving force as Thomson Reuters sees over $192 milliuon in revenues in 2011 and over $213 million in revenues in 2012.

JON C. OGG

A call has been placed to get to the bottom of this issue and we are awaiting a call back from company representatives. 

There are online messages and chats about municipal bond accounting, but this is very vague and it may not even be a financial issue in reality.  Sandler O’Neill cut its price target to $4.50 from $5.50 and maintained a “Hold” rating per CNBC data earlier this morning.  The move today and this week is certainly worse than just an analyst downgrade.    

Just on Tuesday this was above $5.00 with a drop of $0.29 to $5.16 on elevated volume compared to recent days.  On Wednesday this hit 2.26 million shares and the stock fell to $3.393.  Today we have a 21% loss to $3.05 on almost 4 million shares as of 12:30 PM EST.

Average volume is only 120,000 shares and this is an extreme reading.  Most trading days this does not even trade 100,000 shares.  Shares hit a new 52-week low today and the 52-week trading range is now $2.73 to $8.09.

For now, we are simply awaiting more data for clarity.

UPDATE at 3:30 PM EST: A clarification statement has been issued by Penson and shares were halted at 3:17 PM EST.  Full detail at 247wallst.com.

JON C. OGG

For whatever this is worth, we have considered that Nuance could ultimately be acquired.  The problem in thinking that Apple would acquire is that this Dragon NaturallySpeaking software is used on so many Windows machines. 

Speech-to-text and text-to-speech are likely to only grow.  Our take is that ultimately Nuance will be acquired.  The three acquirers we had considered as possible acquirers came to a tie between Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) followed in a distant third place by Adobe Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBE).  The problem is that Nuance is getting pricey on a nominal dollar basis.

After a 10% pop to $22.00 and with just over 4 million shares traded already this morning, the market cap is now $6.6 billion.  The new 52-week range just went higher today and that is $14.45 to $22.93.  The average daily volume is about 2.35 million shares per day.

JON C. OGG

(10:17 AM EST)

Some commentary came from CNBC that the rumors are first off called unbelievable and second that rumors of a third party financing have been refuted.  We would also throw in that the consensus analyst price target is $20.26 from Thomson Reuters.

Where we cannot refute a development is in the stock options trading. The May 2011 expiration date is MAY 20, 2011 and we have seen the following trading in Calls alone against the open interest:
CALL$ Vol.  OpInt
16.00 1,155 13,620
17.00 9,037 31,968
18.00 48,745 46,024
19.00 26,660 10,802
20.00 46,826 12,514
21.00 5,927 809
22.00 8,950 329

Just keep in mind taht Alcoa was a $30 an

JON C. OGG
1:10 PM EST

For its December 31, 2010 quarter, Astea reported a 27% gain in revenues to $7.1 million and next income rose more than 200% to $1.2 million or $0.34 EPS.

Software license revenues of $2.6 million were 58% higher than the same period in 2009.  Service and maintenance revenues were $4.5 million compared to $4.0 million for the same period in 2009. 

Astea noted that it has expanded its market opportunity and global presence and claimed to be more optimistic about the economic environment for the service management market space than it has been in past quarters.  It further noted an increased momentum in new customer acquisitions and accelerated growth in its pipeline.

In less than 25 minutes we have shares up a whopping 85% at $7.40 on more than 700,000 shares.  This one hit a new 52-week high of $7.64 today and even after this pop the company’s market cap is a mere $26.6 million.  Stay tuned.

JON C. OGG

At 1:47 PM EST we have shares up 9.5% at $22.37 on more than 1.77 million shares versus an average daily volume of about 420,000 shares.

Its 52-week trading range is $17.03 to $27.96 and the market cap here is north of $910 million.  Thomson Reuters has estimates of $1.51 EPS and $363.35 million in revenues for 2011.

As with all M&A news leaks, these should be considered rumor until there is proof of a deal in the works.

JON C. OGG