Premarket Mover: Axcelis Up on New Bid

Shares of the small Irvine, Calif.-based company jumped 55 cents, or 23 percent, to $2.99, having closed Friday at $2.44.

Spectrum said it will seek regulatory approval for the drug's use in colon cancer treatment and for an oral form of the medicine by the middle of the year.

Shares of Tessera Technologies Inc. rose 52 cents, or nearly 4 percent, to $15.65 in premarket activity, after the microchip design company said its arbitration hearing with Amkor Technology Inc. will proceed on March 31 as scheduled. The ongoing arbitration seeks to resolve Amkor's failure to pay royalties to Tessera under the company's license agreement.

Late last month, the company's stock had plunged after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office appeared to reject the majority of Tessera's claims to the chip designs. But Tessera said last week it could continue to assert its right to the patents until the process was completed.

Origin Agritech Ltd. shares climbed 47 cents, or 8.5 percent, to $6 in premarket trading, having closed Friday at $5.53, after the Chinese seed supplier said China's Ministry of Agriculture has approved two new corn hybrid varieties to its product line for nationwide distribution during the next sales season.

And Axcelis Technologies Inc. saw shares spike 63 cents, or nearly 12 percent, to $6 early Monday, having closed at $5.37 on Friday, after Japan's Sumitomo Heavy Industries and private equity firm TPG raised their takeover bid to $6 per share from $5.20, which Axcelis had rejected last week.

Meanwhile, shares of Level 3 Communications Inc. slipped nearly 9 percent to $1.99 in premarket trading, having closed Friday at $2.18, after the communications network operator said Kevin O'Hara is stepping down as president and chief operating officer, effective immediately.

The company also announced that Chief Financial Officer Sunit Patel will continue as CFO, and a search for a new CFO has been terminated.

Shares of communications equipment company Ciena Corp. dipped almost 2 percent, as Piper Jaffray analyst Troy Jensen downgraded the stock to "Neutral" from "Buy" and lowered his price target to $29.