2 O.C. Companies Quickly Pay Price for Poor Forecasts

Investors punished two Orange County companies Friday, driving their stock prices down to 52-week lows after each had warned of disappointing results in the first quarter.

Shares of Irvine-based Sync Research Inc. plunged 40% to finish at $3.75 per share, after bottoming out at $3.5625 in heavy trading on the Nasdaq market. More than 3 million shares changed hands, far more than typical daily volume of about 250,000 shares.

Similarly, PIA Merchandising Services Inc. shares lost 35% of their value, closing at $5.625 a day after the Irvine company said that it expects to report a loss in the first quarter, and that its president and chief operating officer, Tom Goss, had resigned.

Analysts said that investors, nervous that the stock market may be peaking, are abandoning companies at the slightest provocation.

“There’s a lot of volatility in the market right now,” said Joe Noel, an analyst at Hambrecht & Quist in San Francisco. “If there are any cracks in the foundations of companies, investors are taking them out and shooting them.”

PIA, which provides in-store merchandising and sales services, warned that its earnings would be substantially below last year’s results for the rest of the year. PIA shares had traded as high as $28 last May.

Sync, a maker of computer networking devices, said Thursday that it expects to report a $6-million loss in the first quarter, falling below analysts’ projections for the second time in the past year.

Sync executives said Thursday that the company would look for ways to cut expenses by 15% to 20%, although they declined to say whether there would be layoffs among the company’s 200 employees.

Sync was a Wall Street darling in November 1995, when the company’s stock soared from $20 to $44 on its first day of trading.