What is Ramius Up To?

Ramius Capital is increasing its investment in the technology sector, in particular in the wireless services firm Immersion Corporation (NASDAQ: IMMR), where it now owns 15% of the equity, having been aggressively buying since August.

Between late August and early October, presumably in some part due to this buying, the price of IMMR rose from $3.75 to $5. It peaked there and headed down again, though, and was back down around $3.75 at the start of this month. In the last three weeks, there has been a rebound, so that at the close of business Monday, Nov. 23, the price of the stock was $4.12.

Instead of trying to give meaning to that zig-zag, I'll move on to another example of Remius' tech buying. They've bought the stock of PC motherboard manufacturer Phoenix Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: PTEC). Ramius has added 535,535 PTEC shares to its current holdings, for a total of shares outstanding of 13.4%. Ramius offered to buy PTEC in 2007.

PTEC's stock price took a tumble in mid-October when it announced said its fourth-quarter results. The net loss widened to $5.02 million from $4.57 million in the prior year period. Thomson Reuters had polled three analysts and on average they expected the company to report a loss of $0.06 per share for the quarter. They actual loss per share was $0.15.

Just some wonkish facts for the day. Look for significance elsewhere.