Two local technology companies saw their stocks hammered Friday after they gave conservative outlooks for the current quarter and balance of the year.
Shares of Santa Ana’s Powerwave Technologies Inc., a maker of amplifiers, antennas and other gear for cell phone towers, slumped 13% in early afternoon New York trading on a market value of $155 million.
On a conference call with analysts yesterday, Powerwave projected modest sales growth for the year and said its telecommunications and wireless carrier customers are slowing spending on their networks.
“While we were establishing a target forecast for 2010, we want to stress that we remain conservative in our outlook for overall capital spending within the wireless infrastructure industry,” Chief Financial Officer Kevin Michaels said in a call with analysts. “We realize that we are all in a tough economic environment and we expect to see various offers continue to control their overall capital spending in this type of environment.”
Powerwave said it’s expecting 2010 sales of $590 million to $620 million, up around 7% from 2009’s yearly sales. It didn’t give a profit outlook or its financial guidance for the current quarter.
Analysts, on average, are looking for profits of $15 million on $601 million in sales for 2010.
The conservative outlook comes on the heels of Powerwave’s results for the three months through Jan. 3, which saw the company get back into black ink.
Excluding charges for stock compensation, severance pay and other costs, the company swung to a profit of $1 million, versus a loss of about $9 million during the same period a year earlier.
Powerwave saw sales of $143 million, down 21% from the year-ago quarter.
The company has been focused on cutting costs.
During the December quarter it opened up a 135,000-square-foot factory in Thailand that’s set to have some 500 workers by the end of the year.
Shares of Anaheim’s TTM Technologies Inc., a contract maker of printed circuit boards for consumer electronics, defense and networking devices, were down 8% on a recent market value of about $390 million.
For the current quarter, TTM said it’s expecting to report profits of $7 million to $8 million, down about 50% from a year earlier, on sales of $132 million to $140 million, down 3% from a the year-ago quarter.
Analysts, on average, are looking for profits of $8 million on sales of $145 million.
For the three months through December, TTM reported sales of $150 million, down 10% from a year earlier and ahead of analysts’ expected $145 million in revenue.
Excluding one-time charges, the company posted profits of $8 million, down 10% from a year ago and beating analysts’ expectation of $7 million in profits.
