EPSON SHARES DROP 13%

[Anonymous]

Seiko Epson Shares Drop as Credit Suisse Cuts Rating
July 07 — Shares of Seiko Epson Corp., the world’s second-biggest maker of inkjet printers, tumbled the most in almost two years after Credit Suisse Group cut the stock’s investment rating to “underperform.”Seiko Epson plunged 13 percent to 3,330 yen at the close on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, the biggest drop since Sept. 22, 2005. Kunihiko Kanno, a Tokyo-based analyst at Credit Suisse, lowered his rating on the Suwa, central Japan-based company from “neutral,” and kept his estimate for the shares to fall to 3,300 yen in the next 12 months.“The current share price is overvalued,” Kanno wrote in a report dated July 27. The company’s inkjet-printer business faces “challenging” business conditions and expenses for promotions may be higher than anticipated, he wrote.The company said on July 27 that net income was 1.29 billion yen ($11 million) in the three months ended June 30, compared with a loss of 5.68 billion yen a year earlier. Sales fell 1.1 percent to 318.6 billion yen as a weaker yen pushed up profit.Seiko Epson forecast net income will reach 30 billion yen this fiscal year, compared with a loss of 7.1 billion yen a year earlier. Sales may fall 1.6 percent to 1.39 trillion yen, while operating profit, or sales minus the cost of goods sold and administrative expenses, will probably increase 21 percent to 61 billion yen. 

[Author]

July 30, 2007 at 11:40 AM