Anaheim circuit board maker Multi-Fineline Electronix Inc. saw its stock crumble nearly 30% on Wednesday after it fell short of Wall Street expectations and warned for the current quarter.
The company, which sells flexible circuit boards that go into Motorola Inc.’s slim cell phones, on Tuesday reported earnings of $12.5 million in the quarter ended March 31. Analysts were expecting $13.3 million.
Earnings were up 59% from a year earlier.
Revenue shot up 60% to $124 million but still short of expectations of about $130 million.
For the current quarter, Multi-Fineline, known as M-Flex, said it expects net income of $12.2 million to $13.6 million.
Analysts were expecting closer to $14 million.
Sales for the current quarter could be $126 million to $136 million, the company said, versus Wall Street’s earlier estimate of $137.4 million.
The company, which now has a market value of about $1 billion, said it doesn’t plan to offer more guidance until after it works through a $500 acquisition of Singapore’s MFS Technology Ltd.
Both M-Flex and MFS are part of Singapore’s WBL Corp. The acquisition, announced in March, drew criticism from some investors.
They worried Motorola might shift contracts away from M-Flex so its manufacturing isn’t too concentrated with one supplier.
M-Flex gets more than 80% of its sales from Motorola. MFS gets about 50% of its sales from the phone maker.
Phil Harding, chief executive of M-Flex, touted his company’s move to diversify its customer base.
“M-Flex continues to achieve record growth as demand remains strong in the overall market for handset devices and with our major customer,” Harding said. “In addition, sales to a second handset maker, which are expected to approach 10% of our quarterly sales in the second half of calendar 2006, continued to increase. Ramp-up with a third handset maker, which we initiated in the first quarter, continues as well.”
