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Although Citrix Systems' stock price dropped by almost half over the past month, some analysts think its shares are under-rated.
Fort Lauderdale software maker Citrix (Nasdaq: CTRX) was upgraded by Merrill Lynch last week, saying the recent sell off was overdone. A vote of confidence soon followed from Lehman Brothers, which said there was no evidence to support speculation that Microsoft's Windows Terminal Services encroach on key application features of Citrix's MetaFrame 1.8 or MetaFrame XP.
Still, the company's stock price has slid 43 percent since August. It also lost 40 percent of its market capitalization - or about $4.6 billion - between 1999 and 2000.
Daniel Morgan, a technology stocks analyst with Noble Financial in Boca Raton, has been "neutral" on Citrix since 2000 and continued that recommendation this week.
"They make something called thin client, a scaled down version of a mainframe environment where you put everything on one server," said Morgan, who described the product as a mini-mainframe. "It got popular because it's cheaper than client servers and lowers costs."
Citrix spokesman Robert Bartolotta declined to address the movement of its stock price.
"We don't comment on rumor or speculation or what the stock does," he said, adding that the company was on track for its upcoming earnings announcement scheduled for later this month.
Citrix director of product marketing Dave Manks assured there is not a conflict between Metaframe products and Windows terminal services.
MetaFrame application server software helps juice up computer networks by letting non-Windows-based computers, handheld devices, and information appliances run Windows-based applications remotely from a central server....