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It's every small-cap company's dream: a plug from the staff of America's best-known business newspaper.
Last week, Tekelec nearly realized that dream when the Wall Street Journal Sunday, a weekly section that appears in local newspapers around the country, called the Calabasas, Calif.,company a "tech dark horse" known for its "cutting-edge products."
There was only one problem: a chart accompanying the flattering article mistakenly listed the ticker symbol for Teletech Holdings, not Tekelec. TeleTech, an Englewood, Colo., call-center company, competes with Sykes Enterprises of Tampa and has a center in Tampa.
TeleTech seemed to reap the benefits of the error. The day after the Journal's flub, its stock rose 20 percent in heavy trading. Tekelec's stock, meanwhile, fell 4 percent in light trading. The Journal said it wrote a correction.
But TeleTech spokeswoman Carol Hahn wasn't ready to concede, calling after-the-fact analyses of stock movement "speculative."
"We did have a board member purchase stock recently as well," she said, "which I know is one of the factors that can sometimes affect the traffic on a stock purchase."