Glenayre Technologies Inc.’s stock plummeted to a new 52-week low under massive trading late last week after the company changed its fourth quarter revenue expectations from a profit of four cents per share to a loss of between one and three cents per share.
The company’s stock dove 22 percent Friday to close at $3.50 a share, down from a 52-week high of $30 per share.
The company said its fourth quarter revenues would be $70 million, not the $70 million to $73.2 million Glenayre was expecting.
The change in expectations was due to product mix and increased spending on research and development and marketing programs, the company said. In addition, Glenayre’s president and chief executive officer, Eric Doggett, said the lower revenue expectation was due to “several sales opportunities that we believe are too high a risk to count on for this quarter.”
However, he said, sales of the company’s wireless devices-most notably its @ctiveLink wireless messaging solution for HandSpring Inc.’s Visor personal digital assistant-are “tremendous” and well above analysts’ expectations.
The company said it expects to report full year 2000 earnings per share of about 4 to 6 cents, compared with a loss of 26 cents last year.
As for next year, Doggett said the infrastructure revenue “is expected to be essentially flat,” but wireless data device revenue should grow more than 80 percent. In addition, Glenayre plans to introduce its first CDMA module, which the company hopes will help boost its total, year-over-year growth rate to about 30 percent for next year.
