Smithfield Foods & Lattice Semiconductor Slumps After Earnings (SFD, LSCC)
Smithfield Foods, Inc. (NYSE:SFD) slid 6.64% to $18.27 after the company reported a steep decline in fourth-quarter earnings on lower revenue and weak margins.
The company reported net income of $79.5 million, or 49 cents a share, down from $98.4 million, or 59 cents, a year earlier. . The most-recent quarter included insurance reimbursements of 6 cents a share, while the year-earlier quarter included a debt-retirement charge of 26 cents a share. Sales grew 3% to $3.21 billion. Analysts polled were estimating earnings of 53 cents on revenue of $3.26 billion. The hog-production segment’s sales jumped 7.9%, while its international business saw a 0.3% rise. Gross margin fell to 10.7% from 14.6% as input costs jumped 7.8%.
Smithfield’s board is also allowing the company to buy up to an additional $250 million of common stock over the next two years since it has nearly exhausted its prior $250 million stock repurchase authorization.
Lattice Semiconductor (NASDAQ:LSCC) slumped 17% after lowering its earnings guidance for the second quarter due to weak markets in Europe.
The company now projects revenue to be flat to down 4 percent sequentially, implying sales of $71.7 million to $69.5 million in the quarter. Analysts were expecting second-quarter revenue of $73.5 million. Last week, rival Altera affirmed its second-quarter forecast of a sequential revenue growth of 14 percent to 18 percent.
Lattice, whose chips are used in communications, computing, industrial, consumer and automotive industries, also lowered its forecast for second-quarter gross margin to about 51 percent from 55 percent.
Shares of LSCC slumped 16.27% to $3.76 after hitting a new 52-week low of $3.70 earlier in the session.
Lattice Semiconductor Corporation (Lattice) designs, develops and markets programmable logic products and related software. The Company participates in both the field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) and programmable logic devices (PLD) markets.