Qualcomm’s No-Show Spooks Investors

Shares of Qualcomm Inc. slumped about 7% on Monday after the wireless telecommunications provider pulled out of an investor conference, apparently leaving some investors wondering if bad news was around the corner.

Qualcomm fell $12.31 to close at $153.38 on Nasdaq. The stock has swung in the last year from less than $19 to more than $198.

The market may have been spooked when Qualcomm skipped an investor conference in Boston on Monday morning, said Mark Cavallone, an analyst with the S&P;’s Equity Group in New York. “People read into that that they are going to have a bad quarter or something,” he said.

But a spokeswoman for the San Diego-based company said the conference no-show was because of a scheduling conflict.

Investors may be on the alert for news from Qualcomm after Everen Securities on Sept. 1 forecast that the company would meet quarterly profit goals but fail, for a change, to clobber analysts’ estimates.