Shares of solid-state drive maker Stec (STEC) are down $1.22, or 10%, $10.48 down $1.80, or over 15%, at $9.90 after the company this afternoon reported Q3 revenue and earnings per share ahead of consensus, but forecast Q4′s revenue lower than expected and said it will deliver a loss per share instead of the expected profit as customers delayed some purchases.
Revenue in the three months ended in Q3 fell almost 16%, year over year, to $72.5 million, yielding EPS of 14 cents, beating the consensus $70.8 million and 10 cents a share estimate.
CEO Manouch Moshayedi said adoption of solid-state drives was being hindered by high prices, which have to come down:
ven though SSD adoption is taking hold, the current price of SSDs has continued to hinder full adoption. We believe that we are in a period of transition for the industry and that this pricing impediment will be solved with the replacement of FPGA with ASIC designs and SLC Flash with MLC Flash. The next versions of our products will include both of these advances. Our customer base continues to expand as we add to our success in qualifying our drives into large, established OEMs and by introducing them into more platforms of emerging storage companies.
For the current quarter, the company sees revenue in a range of $55 million to $57 million, and EPS, excluding some costs, ranging from break-even to a loss of 2 cents a share.
Analysts have been expecting $72.55 million this quarter and 11 cents profit.
Stec’s conference call with analysts is underway, having started at 4:30 pm, Eastern, and you can listen in by dialing (877) 645-6380 in North America or (914) 495-8562 internationally.
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