Doleful Earnings Report Drives Odetics Stock Down

Shares of Odetics Inc. fell 17% Tuesday as Wall Street delivered its response to the company’s report that net income dropped 71% for its fiscal second quarter, which ended Sept. 30.

The company’s class A common stock, which carries full voting rights, closed at $6 a share, down $1.25 a share from Monday’s close on the Nasdaq market system. More than 111,000 shares changed hands.

Odetics’ stock has been volatile lately, gaining and losing similar amounts in a day’s trading. Just last week, the price jumped 15%.

The company’s class B common stock, which does not carry full voting rights, fell $1 a share to close at $6.25 in light trading.

Late Monday, after the stock market closed, the Anaheim maker of automated and robotic products for the computer industry said its net income fell to $51,000 during its second three-month period, from $177,000 in last year’s second quarter.

The company blamed the decline on expenses associated with its expansion in Europe and Singapore.

In an interview Tuesday, Odetics Chairman Joel Slutzky said the company also had been disappointed by slow sales of its automated equipment for television station operations. Many stations were studying competing systems that had been introduced last spring, he said.

“The customers were digesting how these new offerings fit into the total picture,” he said. Sales of that automated equipment have risen in recent weeks, Slutzky said, but he wasn’t sure yet if that represented a trend.

Still, second-quarter revenue rose 14% to $22.7 million from $19.6 million, and Slutzky said he expects that earnings will rebound to previous levels by the end of the fiscal year and that revenue will continue to grow.

Wall Street had been expecting quarterly earnings of 10 to 14 cents a share, instead of the 1 cent a share the company recorded, said William Gibson, an analyst with the Santa Barbara office of Irvine’s Cruttenden & Co. brokerage.

But with growing sales for security camera equipment and other products, Odetics is “in good shape” overall, he said. “They’re in a position for what I expect will be good growth for the second half of the fiscal year.”