Gentner Expects Earnings to Rise Up to 50%: Bloomberg Forum
Gentner Expects Earnings to Rise Up to 50%: Bloomberg Forum
New York, Oct. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Gentner Communications
Corp., the self-styled ``Mercedes' of audio-equipment makers,
expects fiscal 2000 earnings as high as 45 cents a share,
50 percent above 1999, said Chief Executive Frances M. Flood.
``We have our employees really focused on understanding
profitability,' she said.
Gentner equipment can record conferences with as many as
2,000 participants, then ``clean it up through digital sound
processing and bring pristine audio on air,' Flood said.
While its equipment has been used for 18 years in radio and
television stations, Gentner's also benefiting from the Internet,
where customers like Yahoo! Inc., the No. 1 directory, use its
equipment to process audio for broadcasts on the World Wide Web.
Fiscal first-quarter net income more than doubled to
$1.08 million, or 12 cents, from $509,000, or 6 cents, a year
earlier. Sales for the period ended Sept. 30 increased 29 percent
to $7.1 million from $5.5 million. The CEO said the sales pace
remains high in the current second quarter.
For the year ending June 30, ``we're looking for top-line
growth of 30 percent, so that would put our sales around the
$30 million mark,' Flood told the Bloomberg Forum. ``Our
earnings-per-share target range is 41 to 45 cents.'
Gentner's 1999 net income was $2.5 million, or 30 cents, on
sales of $23 million.
Flood, 43, a Brooklyn native who joined the company in 1996
and was elected CEO last year, said the company might tap some of
its $4.2 million in cash to acquire technology, services or
another company, although nothing is pending.
Instead, she said, Salt Lake City-based Gentner wants to
benefit from a recent reorganization, under which about two-
thirds of sales will come from audioconferencing products and the
remainder from remote facilities-management systems that radio
stations install at their transmitters.
Profit is roughly split between the two divisions, Flood
said. Gross margins, which rose to 61.2 percent last quarter from
54.2 percent a year earlier, gained because of a better mix as
well as a big focus on software, she said.
The Gentner audio products -- mainly VCR-sized computers
crammed with digital signal-processing chips from Motorola Inc.
that are priced from $2,995 to $4,995 apiece -- are designed to
operate with video and sound equipment made by electronics giants
like Sony Corp.
``We're in a niche market of high-end installed audio
products,' she said |
