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JDS posts wide loss, warns
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October 25, 2001: 5:20 p.m. ET
Fiber-optic component maker logs $1.2B loss, sees more trouble ahead.
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NEW YORK (CNNmoney) - JDS Uniphase reported a huge fiscal first-quarter loss Thursday on sales that fell more than 58 percent from the same quarter last year.
The company also lowered the bar for the current quarter, anticipating further losses and a sequential decline in revenue.
After the close of trading, the company said it lost $1.2 billion, or 93 cents per share. That compares with a net loss of $1 billion, or $1.07 per share, during the same quarter last year.
At $329 million, the company's first-quarter revenue fell 58 percent from $786.5 million a year ago.
On Sept. 24, JDS Uniphase, the world's largest supplier of the components used to build fiber-optic networking equipment, said it had expected to report quarterly sales of $325 million. Prior to that, analysts generally had expected revenue of about $357.4 million.
After rising more than 9 percent on Nasdaq ahead of the earnings news, JDS Uniphase shares slid 76 cents to $9.20 in extended-hours trade Thursday. The stock has fallen more than 91 percent over the past year from a high of $104.56 last autumn.
Faced with a swift and sudden slowdown in demand for fiber-optic networking equipment as telecom and Internet service providers pared back spending amid slowing, uncertain economic conditions, JDS Uniphase has been logging huge net losses recently.
During its fiscal fourth-quarter, the company recorded a net loss of $12.4 billion, or $9.39 per share, on revenue of $601 million. For the full year, losses totaled $60.8 billion, or $46.79 per share.
Among other cost-cutting measures, the company has laid off more than 16,000 employees this year, a move it said will save $800 million in annual expenses.
During a teleconference Thursday evening, JDS Uniphase executives said they had put in place a cost structure under which the company would break even with $350 million in revenue, and they expect to report breakeven results during their fiscal fourth quarter, which ends in June.
They also said ordering patterns appear to be stabilizing.
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"We still cannot predict the bottom with utmost confidence, although cancellations of customer orders have declined significantly," said Jozef Strauss, JDS Uniphase's co-chairman and chief executive.
"We do not believe that September was the bottom, but December or March may be," Strauss added. "We recognize that carrier capital spending is forecasted to decline, but given our discussions with customers regarding their plans for new product launches and continued inventory reductions, we believe that December or March can represent the low point of the industry downturn."
Excluding a slew of one-time charges, including write-downs on the value of the company's long-term assets and charges related to layoffs and plant closures, JDS Uniphase's loss amounted to 3 cents per share. That compares with an operating profit of 18 cents per share a year ago and was in line with the consensus estimates of analysts polled by First Call.
And the company said it expects to log more operating losses in the fiscal second-quarter.
Excluding one-time charges, JDS Uniphase said it expects to lose between a penny per share and 2 cents per share for the quarter on sales that will fall between 10 percent and 15 percent from the first quarter's level.
By First Call's count, analysts generally had expected JDS Uniphase to break even in the second quarter on roughly $308.7 million in sales, suggesting a 6 percent sequential decline. 
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