| Business Week -- SanDisk Corp. (SNDK) Thursday it moved to a fourth-quarter profit on a 55 percent year-over-year increase in sales of its flash memory storage cards.
SanDisk beat analysts' estimates as sales for memory cards for mobile phones, digital cameras, USB flash drives and other electronics climbed 22 percent from the third quarter to the fourth quarter, which coincided with the holiday shopping season.
But shares fell $1.16, or nearly 4 percent, to $28.78 on Thursday.
The quarterly results stood in contrast to the previous year. For the three-month period ended Jan. 3, the company reported earnings of $339.5 million, or $1.45 per share, after a loss of $1.76 billion, or $7.78 per share, last year.
Total fourth quarter revenue was $1.24 billion, up 44 percent from $863.8 million.
Excluding one-time items, SanDisk said it earned $1.18 per share.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of 69 cents per share on revenue of $1.17 billion. Analyst estimates usually leave out one-time items.
"We delivered a terrific fourth quarter in 2009 -- our best performance ever in product revenue, profit and cash flow," said Eli Harari, SanDisk's chairman and CEO.
For the full year, SanDisk reported net income of $415 million, or $1.79 per share, compared with a loss of $1.98 billion, or $8.82 cents per share, in 2008. Total revenue came in at $3.57 billion, up nearly 7 percent from $3.35 billion last year.
Removing one-time items, the company said it earned $1.84 per share in 2009.
Analysts predicted annual earnings of $1.35 per share on revenue of $3.48 billion. |
