Lattice warns of shortfall in earnings, sales
The chipmaker says it will miss expectations for the March quarter because of a drop in demand for its customers' end products.
Lattice makes programmable logic devices used in communications, electronic data processing, and industrial and consumer markets. A broader slowdown in the communications industry, a major consumer of those devices, has affected some of Lattice's competitors, including Altera and Xilinx.
Altera issued a warning earlier this week, and analysts have said they expect one from Xilinx.
Lattice shares were up 88 cents to $20.44 in midday trading Friday.
The company said first-quarter revenue would drop about 20 percent from the $150.8 million posted in the fourth quarter. That's significantly short of the $140.8 million expected by analysts, according to First Call.
Earnings before goodwill for the March quarter are expected to be about 25 percent lower than the fourth quarter, when it posted a profit of $40.4 million, or 34 cents a share. That would put per share earnings at 26 cents a share, compared with the 30 cents per share expected by First Call.
Lattice expects 2001 earnings before goodwill to drop 15 percent to 20 percent from 2000 to about $113 million to $120 million, or $1 to $1.05 per share. Wall Street had predicted a $1.27 per share profit.
"For the past several months overall semiconductor market conditions have been quite turbulent," CEO Cyrus Y. Tsui said in a release. "Within the PLD (programmable logic device) sector, what began as an inventory correction, now appears to be exacerbated by a general slowdown in demand for our customers' end products. Should macroeconomic conditions improve, we are hopeful of a return to sequential revenue growth in the second half of 2001."