STOCK WATCH

Computer Associates

Computer Associates' shareholders have overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to limit the stock compensation of its senior executives. Nearly 96 per cent of shareholders voted against or abstained on the proposal, even though the vendor paid out more than $1bn to top executives last year.

Hummingbird

Enterprise software vendor Hummingbird made a profit of $8m on sales of $42.5m for the third quarter ended 30 June. Sales rose by 24 per cent during the quarter ended 31 March.

Cisco

Cisco has bought loss-making optical networking start-up Cerent, for about $7bn - its biggest acquisition to date. Cerent's products will enable it to attack the service provider market dominated by Lucent and Nortel Networks. Cisco also purchased optical networking vendor Monterey Networks for about $500m.

3dfx

The share price of graphics card manufacturer 3dfx dropped 27 per cent after it reported a loss of $11.5m in its second quarter. Revenue for the quarter ended 31 July rose to $104.8m compared with $59.8m last year. 3dfx posted a profit of $9m on sales.

Acer

Acer has revealed that it expects to earn between $228m and $235m in 1999. The figure is triple last year's, but still below analyst forecasts.

The manufacturer blamed the competitive US PC market and the slump in the chip sector for failing to meet expectations.