Tech Firms Buying Back Stock

A number of technology firms, including Intel, Cisco and 3Com, have announced plans to buy back stock in an effort to increase market stability during a volatile day of trading Monday, the first day the markets have been active since Tuesday's terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.

As of noon Monday, the Dow was down more than 450 points, or 4.7 percent, while the Nasdaq was roughly 78 points off its opening mark, or 4.6 percent down.

The decreased share prices appeared to be across the board in the hi-tech sector. IBM was down $1.29 a share at $95.18 in late morning trading, while Microsoft saw its issues drop about 5 percent to $54.34 a share. Cisco shares were down about 2.3 percent to just over $14 a share.

Cisco was among the first hi-tech giants to embrace the repurchase option, last week announcing that its board authorized a stock repurchase program of up to $3 billion over the next two years.

Intel said early Monday that it would increase its buyback program by 300 million shares while 3Com said it would begin open market repurchases of its common stock.

Content management and delivery companies also increased their buyback efforts this week. Software company Vignette said it plans to repurchase up to $50 million of its common stock, while Akamai Technologies' board of directors has authorized buyback activities of up to $20 million over the next six months.

But it's not just the industry heavyweights that have chosen to pursue buyback options for their common stock. TeleTech Holdings, which provides CRM services announced that its board has authorized a stock repurchase program of up to 10 percent of its common stock outstanding. And ACE*COMM, a provider of network operations support technologies, says it has approved a plan to buy back up to $200,000. OTG Software's directors okayed a repurchase program for up to one million shares of its stock.