Profit Falls at Sharper Image

Sharper Image Corp., the seller of products such as Ionic Breeze air purifiers and robotic vacuum cleaners, said Thursday that fiscal second-quarter profit fell 16%. The company also lowered its earnings forecast for the year.

Net income in the period ended July 31 fell to $676,000, or 4 cents a share, from $808,000, or 5 cents, a year earlier, the San Francisco-based company said.

Sharper Image expects a net loss of 8 cents to 11 cents a share in the third quarter because of lower-than-expected sales in the first half of this month.

It also lowered its profit forecast for the year ending in January to $1.65 to $1.69 a share, compared with a previous forecast $1.83 to $1.87.

Second-quarter revenue rose 19% to $149 million, up from $124.7 million.

Sales fell short of Sharper Image’s expectations because it couldn’t get as many time slots for television infomercials as it had anticipated and because advertising rates had gone up because of the election campaigns, the company said.

Shares of Sharper Image fell to $15.81 in after-hours trading. They had dropped 58 cents to $16.90 on Nasdaq.

The second-quarter profit met the average estimate of 11 analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call.