Citrix Shares Plunge After 2nd-Quarter Profit Warning (Update3)
By Anthony Massucci
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, June 12 (Bloomberg) -- Shares of Citrix Systems Inc., which adapts Microsoft Corp. software for computer networks, plunged as much as 46 percent after it said second-quarter profit would be about half of analysts' forecasts.
Citrix fell 18 1/64 to 23 11/64 in early afternoon trading after dropping as low as 22 11/64, wiping out more than $3.5 billion in market value. The shares fell 31 percent Thursday and Friday after the company's chief financial officer skipped an investor conference and an analyst downgraded the shares.
The company, whose customers include Microsoft, International Business Machines Corp. and Unisys Corp., makes software that allows desktop computers to run off a central server. Citrix said it's taking longer to close contracts as it shifts away from its previous focus on selling packaged software to selling software licenses to companies with 500 or more users.
The warning from the company ``tells you maybe they don't know the marketplace as well as they thought they did,'' said Jim Grefenstette, senior portfolio manager at Federated Investors Inc., which has 700,000 shares of Citrix. ``It's absolutely a damage to management credibility.''
Citrix said second-quarter earnings will fall to 9 cents a share to 11 cents before amortization related to acquisitions, from 16 cents a year ago. Citrix was expected to earn 21 cents, the average estimate of analysts polled by First Call/Thomson Financial. Sales should rise to as much as $110 million from $94.4 million, Citrix said.
The Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based company said it's looking more closely at its expenses and may move to cut costs this year.
Citrix shares were the most actively traded on U.S. markets, with some 63.82 million changing hands as of early afternoon.
Signs of Trouble
Citrix Chief Executive Mark Templeton said on a conference call that the company still has too much packaged software in its inventory.
``We expect these trends to continue through the second half of the year,'' he said.
Gerard Klauer Mattison & Co. analyst Michael Cristinziano said there were signs of trouble starting with the last quarter. Cristinziano, who has a ``buy'' rating on Citrix, warned in March that Citrix's sales wouldn't beat first-quarter analyst estimates.
``It was just an in-line quarter,'' he said. ``With Citrix, we're used to strong and upside quarters.''
Even before the recent share drop began, analysts had cited worries about the company's shrinking profit margins and the potential impact of a breakup of Microsoft Corp., which accounted for about 8 percent of Citrix's sales of $403 million last year.
Citrix said today it sees no change in its relationship with Microsoft, which owned about 2 million Citrix shares as of May, according to shareholder filings cited by the company.
Citrix will provide more details on its sales outlook during a conference call July 19, when the company will also give guidance on its operating margins, Templeton said.
``The consensus (by analysts) is about a 43 percent operating margin,'' he said. ``We will be down to about 40 percent by the end of the year, with the biggest impact in the second quarter.'' |
