San Francisco - SanDisk, a maker of memory chips used in mobile devices such as Apple’s iPhone, declined in extended trading after predicting sales will fall in 2015 as it loses customers, delays products and chip prices fall.
Revenue in 2015 will be $5.4 billion to $5.7 billion, Chief Financial Officer Judy Bruner said on Wednesday on a conference call with analysts. SanDisk earlier this year projected about 17 percent higher annual sales. Analysts had estimated $6.15 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
“We are acting quickly and decisively to address the issues that have caused our underperformance,” Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Mehrotra said on the call. The company’s financial performance is unacceptable, he said.
Second-quarter revenue will range from $1.15 billion to $1.23 billion, compared with the average analysts’ estimate of $1.42 billion, the company said.
SanDisk has struggled with supply constraints, production delays and market shifts that have cost it customers and prevented the company from taking advantage of the increasing use of flash memory chips as storage in data centres. Weaker pricing for consumer-based uses of memory chips - in digital cameras in particular - has also affected revenue.
SanDisk shares declined as much as 6.4 percent in extended trading following the announcement. The company had gained 1.1 percent to $71.12 at the close in New York, leaving the stock down 27 percent this year.
Bloomberg