Calico, Lante, Latitude see disappointing quarters
Calico Commerce Inc. (Nasdaq: CLIC) will miss analyst estimates in the second quarter.
After market close Tuesday, the e-commerce software vendor said it will post a fiscal second quarter operating loss ranging between 33 and 43 cents per share. First Call's survey of three analysts predicted a loss of 15 cents per share for the quarter ended Sept. 30.
Second quarter revenue will be $9 million to $10 million, Calico said. Several large deals did not close and one transaction was delayed for financing, the company said. Enterprise software vendors often do not sign the bulk of their contracts until near the end of a quarter.
Shares of Calico slid to 3.5625 in afterhours activity on the Island electronic communications network, following the warning. Calico stock closed Tuesday's regular trading at 5.1875, down 0.9375 for the session.
Other tech companies preannouncing quarterly results:
The Internet consulting services firm expects to report a third quarter net loss and lower revenues than the second quarter, reflecting financial uncertainties at some of its Internet client firms. Lante expects a net loss of $6 million to $7 million for the third quarter ended Sept. 30, excluding amortization. The loss includes an anticipated bad debt expense of about $1.7 million.
Lante said it expects revenues for the period to be 12 to 15 percent less than the $23.6 million reported for the second quarter of 2000. The Chicago-based company reported revenues of $9.3 million in the third quarter last year.
Some revenue improvement will come in the fourth quarter, the company said.
"Third quarter revenue and earnings were adversely affected by a few of our dot-com clients whose funding became uncertain. We have taken additional steps to minimise this future risk," said Rudy Puryear, president and CEO.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company said it expects to report third-quarter pro-forma earnings of 1 cent to 2 cents per diluted share on revenues of $10 million to $10.5 million.
Analysts polled by First Call/Thomson Financial had forecast, on average, earnings of 4 cents per share.
Emil Wang, Latitude's president and CEO, blamed the shortfall on disappointing sales in certain segments, especially federal government business. Wang added that earnings were hurt by unusually high turnover in its salesforce.>