Mixed economic reports and the situation in Afghanistan seemed to contribute to investor's fence-sitting.
Thursday was one of the busiest days of the week for activity in the hosting industry, with a number of firms making big announcements. Tech giant IBM said it had inked Dow Chemical to a five year, full-service managed hosting contract that will see IBM manage everything from testing to production. The company also said it would offer Sphera's HostingDirector software to its European hosting customers.
Communications firm Global Crossing released its third earnings Thursday, reporting a 43% growth in commercial data revenues. Additionally, the company said data products continued to represent more than 30% of their telecommunications revenues.
Global Crossing also said commercial revenues were up by 12% from a year ago because of its penetration of the enterprise market. Shares in the company were poised to end the week on a strong note, and had picked up about 30 cents in value from Monday's open by Friday morning, trading at $1.34.
Managed Web hosting firm Verado said Wednesday it was considering filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
The company said it was having discussions with "an informal committee of its bondholders" about filing for Chapter 11, thanks in part to its cumulative net losses of approximately $646 million. Verado said it had $66.3 million remaining, enough to last approximately a year.
Last month, the company announced it would close six of its eight data centers, saying only eight per cent of its "sellable square footage" was currently occupied.
Also on Wednesday, Canadian Web hosting firm NetNation Communications said it had achieved record Q3 profits, reporting a 24% increase in revenues. The company said its revenues amounted to $4,882,108 US this year thus far, compared to $3,610,275 last year. This has been the third consecutive profitable quarter for the company.
Shares in NetNation, which have been very strong the past two months, were trading at $2.83 Friday afternoon.
Infrastructure solutions provider Metromedia Fiber Network Inc (MFN) also made a major announcement Wednesday, saying it had forged an agreement with AOL to help improve AOL's network performance in Germany and the UK. AOL said it would use MFN's (http://www.mfn.com) fiber-optic infrastructure to provide video, audio, and multimedia applications to its European customers.
Tuesday, the company said has expanded its relationship with software storage firm Veritas to provide Internet infrastructure managed services within Veritas' data center environment.
Shares in MFN gained close to seven cents on the news of its agreement with AOL, and were trading at 70 cents Friday afternoon.
On Monday, IP infrastructure firm Juniper Networks, Inc. announced yesterday a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Pacific Broadband Communications of San Jose, California in a stock transaction totaling approximately $200 million. Pacific Broadband develops cable modem termination systems that help cable operators deliver advanced IP services like Voice over IP and high-speed cable modem access.
Investors seemed to think this was a good idea, sending the stock rising by almost $2.50 during the week. Juniper was trading at $25.44 Friday afternoon.
Reporting from companies on their quarterly earnings will continue well in to next week, with a number of companies related to the hosting industry expected to make announcements. Keep an eye open for earnings from LoudCloud and VA Linux, among others, before the week is interrupted by Thanksgiving in the U.S. next Thursday.