• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

C-Cor Shares Plunge Nearly 18 Percent on Lower Outlook

Posted on: Thursday, 18 August 2005, 21:00 CDT

Aug. 19--Shares of C-Cor Inc. plunged nearly 18 percent yesterday, closing at $6.59, off $1.40, after the broadband equipment services and software company reported a fiscal fourth-quarter loss and lowered its outlook for the first quarter.

The State College-based firm said it lost $5.74 million, or 12 cents per diluted share, for the three months ended June 24, vs. net income of $4.62 million, or 10 cents per diluted share, a year ago. Sales rose 7 percent to $68.5 million from $64.2 million last year.

Excluding one-time charges totaling $2 million, or 4 cents a share, C-Cor lost 8 cents per share in the quarter, roughly in line with analysts' estimates.

But the company lowered both its sales and earnings outlook for the current quarter, saying it expects losses in the 9 cents to 14 cents per-share range -- Wall Street had been expecting earnings of 5 cents -- and for sales to range from $65 million to $70 million, vs. an analysts' forecast in the $75 million range.

Chief Executive Officer David Woodle told analysts on a conference call yesterday that integrating the five companies C-Cor acquired in 2004 had taken longer than expected.

"We're in a major transition point for our company," he said. "We expected to have it completed by [this] summer -- with the goal of having [quarterly] revenues at $80 million by the end of [this] fiscal year. We will slip one-quarter from our original goal."

Woodle called the company's integration plan "pretty aggressive," perhaps too ambitious to be completed in a short period, given that the most recent buyout, of Beaverton, Ore.-based nCube Corp., a privately held provider of video-on-demand equipment and software, was finalized in January.

But he said the company had met with the challenge of rolling out products from the newly combined company to large cable and broadband customers, including Englewood, Colo.-based Liberty Global and Middletown, N.Y.-based Mediacom Communications Corp.

Woodle said he expected revenues in the tens of millions to be realized from these large contracts over several years.

He said C-Cor also was focused on helping customers transition from offering their services via traditional cable lines to the faster and more robust Internet.

"It's very clear to us that the marketplace and customers are accepting our strategy," Woodle said. "It's a matter of taking us where we didn't have much revenue -- and turning it into a recurring business model."

For the fiscal year, C-Cor lost $25.7 million, or 57 cents a share, vs. net income of $ 44.2 million, or $1.10 a share, the year before. Sales slipped to $237.3 million from $240.9 million .

-----

To see more of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.post-gazette.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

CCBL, MCCC,

Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

More News in this Category