Tech Stocks: Priceline, Groupon, Apple lead tech action

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) � Tech stocks added to their gains in afternoon trading Wednesday as Internet stocks like Priceline.com Inc. and Groupon Inc. highlighted the day�s advances.

Apple Inc. AAPL was down almost $4 a share at $445 as the company held its annual shareholders� meeting at its Cupertino, Calif., headquarters. See: Apple stock-split rumors surface, but cash may be a bigger issue.

/quotes/zigman/90481/quotes/nls/pcln PCLN 702.11, +23.62, +3.48%

Priceline PCLN shares climbed more than 3%, to $701, in the wake of the company�s late-Tuesday quarterly results. For its fourth quarter, Priceline reported earnings of $349 million, or $6.77 a share, excluding one-time items. The results topped the estimates of analysts surveyed by FactSet, who forecast Priceline to earn $6.53 a share on $1.19 billion in sales.

Priceline gave a first-quarter forecast for earnings of $4.90 to $5.30 a share, excluding one-time items, with sales to rise between 17% and 24% from the $1 billion it reported in the year-ago quarter, for a range of $1.17 billion to $1.24 billion. See: Priceline�s earnings rise along with bookings

Several analysts used Priceline�s results to raise their price targets on the company�s stock, with Mark Mahaney of RBC Capital Markets raising his price target to $900 a share from $770 a share, Brian Nowak of Nomura Equity Research lifting his target to $850 a share from $820, and Aaron Kessler of Raymond James taking his target price on Priceline to $840 a share from $735.

Reuters Groupon CEO Andrew Mason

Groupon GRPN saw its shares rise 7% to $5.94 ahead of fourth-quarter results, which are expected to focus on the daily deals company�s new direct-sales effort. Read more about what's expected from Groupon's results.

LinkedIn Corp. LNKD shares rose more than 7% to $169.40, OpenTable Inc. OPEN climbed 5.6% to $57.07 and Yelp Inc. YELP shares rose 2% to $21.72. Wunderlich Securities analyst Blake Harper initiated coverage on LinkedIn and OpenTable with buy ratings, and began covering Yelp with a rating of neutral.