It was Eastman Kodak Co.’s turn to ride the rumor rocket.
Kodak shares (NYSE: EK) climbed more than 9 percent by mid-afternoon to $26.23 Wednesday despite no news or filings by the imaging firm. But a source on Wall Street explained three rumors were floating around on the Street on Wednesday. More than 10 million shares had traded by 2:15 p.m., compared with an average trading of 2.8 million shares.
The first scenario has a private equity firm in a leveraged buyout of Kodak. The second rumor involved a link of Kodak with Dell Inc. The third involved Warren Buffett looking at Kodak as an investment.
The source, who asked not to be identified, put a “very low” probability on any of those scenarios.
A similar set of rumors fueled a spike in volume at Xerox Corp. on Tuesday, the source said. Some 7 million shares of Xerox stock traded Tuesday, compared with a daily average of 4.2 million shares. The stock, however, edged up just 1 percent.
Leading off the week, Bausch & Lomb Inc. saw its shares climb nearly 13 percent on Monday despite no news from the company. But the firm did report its 2006 annual report today.
$25.51 (04/26/07)
