AGIL ( $16-$13's) Cap=655mil tumbles after profit drops
NEW YORK, Nov 15 (Reuters) - Shares of Agile Software Inc. (NasdaqNM:AGIL - news) fell more than 14 percent on Thursday, a day after the business-to-business software company posted a narrower fiscal second-quarter loss but warned its business outlook was still cloudy.
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Shares of San Jose, California, based Agile were down 14.13 percent, or $2.29, at $13.70 in brisk trading on the Nasdaq, where the stock was one of the biggest net loss and percentage losers.
After the market closed on Wednesday, Agile, which makes software that enables manufacturers to collaborate with suppliers on product design over the Web, posted a net loss of $4.5 million, or 9 cents a share vs. a loss of $14.1 million, or 31 cents a share, the year before. Excluding charges, Agile's pro forma loss was 9 cents a share, beating analyst's lowered consensus of 12 cents a share, according to Thomson Financial/First Call.
But Agile's revenues slowed considerably to $21.2 million, an increase of just 5 percent from the $20.2 million booked in the prior period. In the first quarter, revenue growth was up 48 percent from the year before and stood at $23.3 million. Software license sales, a key measure of a software company's growth rate, fell 14 percent from the previous year to $13 million.
Although Agile's chief executive, Bryan Stolle, said he was optimistic for the long term, he stressed that in the short term, the company's visibility was still poor.
``In the short term, we don't think much has changed,'' Stolle told Reuters on Wednesday. ``We think it's still a very cloudy picture.''
To that end, Agile forecast that it would lose 10 cents to 15 cents a share in both the third quarter and the fourth quarter of fiscal 2002. That's wider than its previous estimate of a loss in the range of 5 cents to 15 cents a share.
The outlook is more bearish than analysts' current consensus estimate for a 10-cent per-share loss in the third quarter and a loss of 7 cents a share in the fourth quarter, according to Thomson Financial/First Call.
Agile also said it sees full year fiscal 2002 revenue of $80 million to $85 million, below analysts' current estimate for annual revenue of $92.42 million.
The news prompted brokerage firm U.S Bancorp Piper Jaffray to lower its rating on Agile to ``neutral'' from ``buy.'' Analyst Tim Klein also cut his full year 2002 revenue target to $85.2 million from $86.3 million.
``This was a solid performance by the company in a very difficult environment, but because of the dramatically higher dependence on large deals and disappointing repeat business we are lowering our rating,'' Klein said in a research note to clients on Thursday.
Credit Suisse First Boston also lowered its full year 2002 revenue estimate to $82.5 million from $91.3 million and widened its earnings per share estimate to a loss of 42 cents from 27 cents a share.
``We believe guidance provided by the company is conservative and assumes a further weakening in the economy,'' said analyst Brent Thill.
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