Cray shares sink on stock downgrade
Shares of Cray Inc. plunged this morning after Northland Securities downgraded the company’s stock to “Market Perform” from “Outperform.”
By 10 a.m. ET, Cray’s (Nasdaq: CRAY) shares had dropped by $2.36, or 19.3%, to $9.88. The stock has traded between $6.03 (on June 8) and $14.40 (on Feb. 23).
Volume was heavy – with nearly 900,000 shares changing hands, compared with an average three-month daily volume of 269,000.
For the first quarter ended March 31, the Seattle, Wash.-based company late Thursday posted a net loss of $800,000, or $0.03 per share, on revenue of $47.1 million, compared with a net loss of $5.3 million, or $0.24 per share, on revenue of $48.5 million.
Four analysts polled by Thomson First Call had estimated a net loss of $0.02 on revenue of $48.3 million for the quarter.
Looking forward, the supercomputer maker revised its revenue range for 2007 to about $230 million. Analysts were expecting full-year revenue of $248.3 million.
The company blamed the revised outlook on the delayed availability of its Cray XT4 and “Black Widow” product lines. It said it is working “to further improve development and other business processes.”
In February, Cray won an $85 million multi-year contract to deliver a parallel processing hybrid supercomputer that will be the centerpiece in the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s High End Computing Terascale Resources project.
Also, in January, Cray announced a multi-phase contract with the U.S. Army
Engineer Research and Development Center to upgrade its existing Cray XT3 supercomputer and install a new Cray XT4 supercomputer.
