Newport Beach-based Mindspeed Technologies Inc., a maker of networking chips, on Monday reported an outlook for the current quarter that’s in line with Wall Street’s expectations.
For the three months through March, Mindspeed said it’s expecting to see sales of $36.9 million to $39.1 million, roughly flat from a year earlier and in line with analysts’ expectations of $38.7 million in revenue.
Mindspeed’s forecast excludes any revenue gain from onetime patent sales.
The company didn’t give a profit outlook. Analysts, on average, are expecting Mindspeed to see profits of $645,000 for the current quarter.
The muted outlook comes on the heels of Mindspeed’s results for the December quarter, which fell short on analysts’ sales expectations but beat on profits.
Excluding patent sales, the company reported revenue of $38 million, up 3% from a year earlier and falling short of analysts’ expectations of $40.5 million in revenue.
Including patent sales, the company saw profits of $3 million, up 50% from a year ago and beating analysts’ expected $2 million in profits.
Excluding one-time gains from patent sales, stock compensation and other costs, Mindspeed reported profits of $500,000.
A few weeks ago, Mindspeed gave a tempered sales outlook, citing “weak demand.”
The company sees encouraging signs ahead as its customers work down their inventories, Chief Executive Raouf Halim said.
“Our current overall backlog and customer forecasts suggest that our customers are making progress in depleting their inventory,” he said. “Order trends are already improving.
Mindspeed’s chips go into routers, switches, gateways and other gear. Its biggest customers are large Chinese networking companies, including China Unicom Ltd. and Huawei Technologies Co., as well as Japan’s Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp.
Investors seemed nonplussed by the report. Shares were flat in afterhours trading on a recent market value of $225 million.
