Shares of Anaheim’s Multi-Fineline Electronix Inc., a maker of flexible circuit boards for cell phones and other mobile devices, slumped Thursday after the company narrowed its sales outlook for the current quarter and said revenue may come in below Wall Street’s expectations.
Investors sent shares down 3% in afterhours trading on a recent market value of around $575 million.
For the current quarter, Multi-Fineline said it’s expecting to report sales of $160 million to $180 million and said it expects sales “to be closer to the bottom of the range.”
It didn’t give a profit outlook.
Analysts, on average, are expecting adjusted profits of $8 million on sales of $171 million.
The first three months of the year typically are slow for the company, known as M-Flex.
Its cautious sales outlook suggests things are even slower for M-Flex now than a year earlier.
The outlook “reflects the normal seasonality after the holidays, the Chinese New Year in February, as well as some programs approaching the end of their life cycle,” Chief Executive Reza Meshgin said.
The outlook comes on the heels of M-Flex’s results for the December quarter, which came in just a bit ahead of expectations.
For the three months through December, Multi-Fineline reported sales of $230 million, up 6% from a year earlier and just ahead of analysts’ expected $229 million in sales.
The December quarter marked a sales record for M-Flex, according to Meshgin.
“In what is historically our strongest quarter of the year, we executed very well and delivered on record demand during the December quarter for our flex assemblies for smartphones and other consumer electronic devices, driving net sales to the highest quarterly level in the history,” he said.
Excluding charges for stock compensation, income taxes and other one-time costs, Multi-Fineline posted profits of $16 million, up 16% from the year-ago quarter and beating analyst’s expectation of $15 million in profits.
Multi-Fineline’s customers include Apple Inc., Research in Motion Ltd. and Motorola Inc., among others.
