It would have been prudent to take some profits along the way, but at the end of last week, it became clear that the heady ride on Borland International Inc shares, the company that lends the lie to the idea that every US company traded on the Unlisted Securities Market in London got its listing because it had something to hide that it would have to disclose under US rules, is not over yet. The shares soared $9.75 to $67.375 – 550 pence to 3,650 pence in London – after Michele Preston at Cowen & Co advised investors to swap out of Lotus Development Corp stock and into Borland, calling Borland the Microsoft Corp of the 1990s and citing less-than-expected success for Lotus’s new spreadsheet. Ms Preston argues that if revenue momentum doesn’t improve, Lotus could be forced to cut back spending and she cut her fourth-quarter earnings estimate for Lotus to a range of 35 cents to 55 cents from her previous estimate of 65 cents. For 1992, she reduced her estimate to $2 from her previous projection of $3. She downgraded her investment opinion on Lotus to underperform from outperform and repeated her aggressive buy on Borland. Lotus shares slumped $3.25 to $24.125.
