Stock Prices Volatile For VARBusiness 500 Companies

Microfocus (2008 VB500 rank 268), a U.K. company with U.S. headquarters in Rockville, Md., saw shares rise almost 5 percent to $280.50 Thursday morning. That's up 13.7 percent from one year ago. Its stock price has clearly benefited from the software vendor's interim earnings report, which showed revenue up 24 percent to $135.6 million from $108.9 million in 2007. In addition, the company said yesterday it would make available Micro Focus COBOL for Eclipse, the rapidly growing open-source ecosystem.

Tata Consultancy Services' (2008 VB500 rank 18) stock is down overall, 49 percent year over year, but was up nearly 7 percent, to $510.50 Thursday morning from Wednesday's close. That figure might be partially due to TCS' announcement Wednesday that it planned to hire more than 3,500 people in China over the next four years. The increase is targeted at growing its business there and at tapping the country's large pool of engineers. India's largest IT firm also said it expects revenue from Asia to grow next year despite the economic slowdown and retrenchments by the region's banks, due to its large pipeline of existing projects.

London-based Misys' (2008 VB500 rank 201) stock is down 45.2 percent year-to-date but it did climb nearly 4 percent from Wednesday in early trading, to $99.50. Wednesday, the company said that one of Egypt's leading banks, Egyptian Saudi Finance Bank (ESFB), had chosen Misys Equation 3.9 for its 11 branches. The solution is the latest version of the popular retail banking solution from Misys and will help ESFB to provide improved services to its customers.