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Technology Stocks : PRTG (PRT Group) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Ritter who wrote (40)	3/6/1998 1:42:00 PM
From: Anthony Wong	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 128

Friday March 6, 1:07 pm Eastern Time PRT Group shares thrashed on loss estimate NEW YORK, March 6 (Reuters) - Shares of PRT Group Inc fell as much as 50 percent Friday after the company said it expects a first-quarter loss of about $3 million from customer delays in the start-up of new projects. Moshe Katri, an analyst at UBS Securities, said this means a per-share loss for the quarter of about $0.16. Officials from PRT were not immediately available to comment. Shares of the New York-based information technology services company were off 9-1/16 at 10-1/16 in midday trading of nearly 4.0 million shares. Earlier, they touched a low of 9-3/4. The company, in a statement late Thursday, said it expects first-quarter revenues to fall below the $19.8 million of the 1997 fourth quarter. ''While we work closely with our clients in designing and reviewing the proposed timeline for each project, we are experiencing longer delays by our clients for starting Year 2000 projects than anticipated,'' David Mellinger, PRT chairman, said in the statement. According to Katri, who listened in on a company conference call early Friday, PRT projects delays on projects with six financial-services clients, including J.P. Morgan, Citibank and Travelers Group. He said the company is redeploying about 120 idle consultants -- previously assigned to the six projects -- to other projects. ''Usually in this industry it's going to take about a quarter or two for these guys to redeploy their consultants, and there will be an impact on numbers for this year and next year,'' Katri said. ''At this point, I think that's why the stock is getting smashed,'' he added. Another analyst, Salomon Smith Barney's L. Keith Mullins, said in a research report that he believes PRT has problems managing its pipeline and utilization and how it sets expectations for project ramp-up. Mullins said he would not recommend buying the stock until PRT management establishes better credibility and shows it has real visibility on its earnings. Katri said essentially the same thing. ''I think there's also a credibility issue more than anything,'' he said. ''Most of the information was already known by the company in January or February of this year, and they basically gave no indication to the Street about that.'' biz.yahoo.com