[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 11:41 AM