Shares of Santa Ana? STEC Inc., a maker of flash memory drives for corporate and industrial uses, soared Monday after the company gave guidance for the current quarter that surpassed Wall Street? expectations for revenue and is more than double analysts?profit outlook.
Investors sent shares up more than 25% in afterhours trading on a recent market value of about $500 million.
For the second quarter, the company said it? expecting profits before charges of $10 million to $11 million.
Analysts, on average, had been looking for profits of about $5 million.
STEC forecast sales of $68 million to $70 million, versus the $59 million analysts had been expecting.
The surprise outlook comes on the heels of STEC? first-quarter results, which beat the company? own guidance and analysts?expectations.
The company reported $64 million in sales, up 25% from the same period a year ago and beating analysts?expected $59 million in revenue.
Excluding costs for restructuring, legal fees, stock compensation and other charges, STEC posted $8 million in profits, more than double profits from a year earlier and surpassing analysts?expectation of about $5 million.
STEC makes flash memory drives that industry insiders refer to as ?olid state?because they have no moving parts. They typically are smaller, more durable and require less electricity to power up and operate.
Last year, STEC rolled out a line of solid state drives that are set to be built into servers made by EMC Corp., Hitachi Data Systems Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc. and others.
Last week, the company announced a solid state drive design win with another biggie, IBM Corp.
STEC said it expects sales of the product line, called ZuesIOPS, to account for roughly $65 million in revenue for the first half of this year.
