SSTI: Umsatz nahezu halbiert - Besserung in Sicht - 500 Beiträge pro Seite

[TalkingHead]

SST Reports Results for First Quarter 2001
SUNNYVALE, Calif., Apr 12, 2001 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- SST (Silicon Storage Technology, Inc.) (Nasdaq: SSTI) today announced results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2001.

Net revenues for the first quarter were $86.3 million, compared with $161.0 million in the fourth quarter of 2000, and with $62.3 million in the first quarter a year ago.

The company had a net profit for the first quarter of 2001 of $5.4 million, or a profit of $0.06 per share, based on approximately 96.4 million diluted shares outstanding. Price negotiation and yield improvements have resulted in lower manufacturing costs. However, due to relatively high inventory levels, gross margin was lower as a result of the write-down to inventory reflecting these activities. Had the company not incurred this write-down of inventory, profit for the first quarter would have been approximately $0.09 per share. By comparison, in the fourth quarter of 2000, the company reported a net profit of $37.3 million, or a profit of $0.39 per share, based on approximately 96.8 million diluted shares outstanding. In the same period a year ago, the company reported a net profit of $9.6 million, or a profit of $0.11 per share, based on approximately 85.0 million diluted shares outstanding.

"This quarter we experienced a significant slowdown in our business as a result of deteriorating domestic and international economies and inventory corrections that continue to constrain demand for technology products," said Bing Yeh, president and CEO. "We initially experienced a sharp downturn in several of our markets late in the fourth quarter of last year, as customers reacted to weakening demand and higher inventories. Market conditions did not improve during the first two months of the quarter and our customers have continued to return product, cancel backlog, or push out shipments.

"The situation has improved slightly since March. Therefore, for the second quarter of 2001, we expect our revenue and earnings per share to increase by 5 to 10 percent sequentially from the previous quarter, with the tax rate remaining at approximately 38 percent."

"Despite the market slowdown, we are continuing our strong focus on the development of new products and the cost reduction of existing products along with continued expansion of licensing relationships and securing wafer foundry capacity with deep sub-micron geometries. We are also taking advantage of this slowdown to strengthen our infrastructure in the areas of manufacturing operations and customer service. Our strong financial position has allowed us to continue to invest in our strategy of becoming a strong leader in the flash market.

"In January, we announced our foundry agreement with Vanguard International to secure additional deep sub-micron capacity for the production of our future high density memories. In February, together with one of our manufacturer`s representative firms, we established a logistics center in Taiwan to better serve our local customer base in the personal computer industry. In March, we announced our technology licensing and foundry partnership for the wireless communication market with OKI Electric Industry of Japan. We also unveiled our strategic moves for the emerging China market as part of our global expansion strategy.

"The interest in licensing our SuperFlash technology for embedded applications has continued to grow from global companies worldwide. We expect our licensing business to continue its robust growth through 2001. With the leverage of technology licensing, we have been able to secure more capacity with advanced technologies from both existing and new wafer foundry partners.

"The development of the self-aligned SuperFlash technology based on 0.25 and 0.18 micron processes is now moving ahead full steam. We are working concurrently with five technology and foundry partners to bring up the state-of-the-art flash technology for our future high-density memories, which include 16Mbit, 32Mbit and 64Mbit products.

"Our continued efforts in expanding the offerings of Firmware Hub and other application specific memory products have begun to bear fruit. With the production ramp of 4Mbit and 2Mbit Firmware Hub, together with our existing market share in the PC market with traditional flash, we believe we are now the world`s number one supplier of flash memory for the PC BIOS applications. We have also made major progress in the video game, electronic organizer and other digital consumer applications.

"We are confident in our belief that SST will be able to weather the current gloomy macro- economic climate. We further believe that we are well positioned to emerge from this cycle a stronger and more dominant player in the global flash memory market," he said.

After Hours Quote:O
5:19:00 PM ET 4/12/2001 Last
8.50 Change (%)
0.64 (+8.14%) Volume
219,600

[Push Daddy]

immerhin, zwar unter den erwartungen aber der ausblick ist einigermaßen gut.

[neubiene^^^^]

Find ich auch gut, vor allem, dass die nicht anfangen zu sparen, sondern in Produktions-Kostenreduktion investieren!

SSTI rulez !

Und wenn irgendwann ein Aufschwung kommen sollte, steht SSTI auch wieder über 20$ (hoffe ich)