By Rex Crum, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Tech stocks looked to rebound
from the prior-day's broad losses Tuesday as much of the sector
advanced, including Rackspace Hosting Inc., following a rating
upgrade from Morgan Stanley.
Among bellwether tech companies, gains came from Apple Inc.
(AAPL), Facebook Inc. (FB), IBM Corp. (IBM) and Hewlett-Packard Co.
(HPQ). The Nasdaq Composite Index (RIXF) rose 19 points to 4,245
and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) was up by almost
1%.
Rackspace (RAX) posted strong gains as the cloud-hosting and
computer-services company's shares rose 9% to $35.68. Before the
market opened, Morgan Stanley analyst Simon Flannery raised his
rating on Rackspace's stock to overweight, or buy, from
equal-weight, and set a price target of $45 a share.
Flannery cited improvements in order bookings and a
differentiated product line among the reasons for his rating
upgrade.
EBay Inc. (EBAY) rose by 40 cents a share to $56.94. The
e-commerce leader issued a "definitive" proxy statement and set a
date of May 13 for its annual shareholders meeting.
In its letter to shareholders, eBay urged shareholders to vote
against a nonbinding proposal by investor Carl Icahn for the
company to spin off PayPal in an IPO. EBay is also against Icahn's
efforts to get two of his nominees on the company's board of
directors. On Monday, Icahn called his plan for eBay to spin off
20% of PayPal as one of "pragmatism."
Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) was up by $2.40 a share at $354.20 one
day ahead of the e-commerce kingpin's AWS Summit in San Francisco,
where the company will give updates on its growing Web services
business.
Attention was also being given to Box Inc., as the
cloud-computing company filed its initial paperwork late Monday to
go public.
Another highly anticipated IPO from King Digital Entertainment
was expected to price after the close of trading Tuesday. However,
skepticism over the growth prospects for the "Candy Crush Saga"
developer began to weigh on the opinions of some industry
analysts.
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