Acme Packet Falls on Jefferies Downgrade

Analysts at Jefferies & Co. downgraded shares of Acme Packet

on Wednesday morning from Buy to Hold, citing near-term concerns. They wrote, "While we still view many aspects of the Acme Packet story very favorably, we're concerned that near-term hesitation by N. American carriers to invest in the Wireline portions of their networks will make it difficult for Acme to hit Street expectations in H2'12." In addition to the downgrade, the firm also lowered its price target on the stock from $40.00 to $21.00. On Wednesday, Acme Packet shares have been under pressure and were last trading down more than 4% to $20.97. Shares are well off of their lows of the session, however, and have been moving higher throughout the afternoon. Acme Packet opened the day at $21.38 and hit a low of $20.21 early in the session. Volume has been heavy with more than 2.5 million APKT shares trading hands compared to a 3-month daily average of under 2 million. Acme Packet, Inc. provides session delivery network solutions, which enable the delivery of voice, video, data and unified communications services and applications across Internet Protocol (IP), networks.