Informatica Shares Tumble On Outlook Worries

"There's been some talk about them losing some their data warehousing business to a company called Embarcadero,' he said, referring to Embarcadero Technologies.

Both companies make software that allow customers to manage and make sense of the vast amounts of information they collect and store.

"I'm also hearing the quarter might be in jeopardy," said the trader who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

+Shares of Informatica were off $1.89 and traded at $7.95 in early afternoon activity on the Nasdaq Stock Market, where they were among the top net and percent losers.

Embarcadero shares were unchanged at $15.94.

On Wednesday afternoon, First Albany analyst Mark Murphy, cut his outlook on Redwood City-based Informatica, saying he believed the company's current quarter sales may be sluggish.

"We believe the current quarter has become more backend-loaded in recent weeks," Murphy wrote in a research note. "Channel-checks suggest a slight slowdown since mid-February."

Murphy cut his first-quarter revenue outlook to $47.2 million and a loss of 2 cents a share, from his prior estimates of $49.1 million in revenue and break-even.

For 2002, he now expects the company to earn 5 cents a share on revenue of $216 million instead of a profit of 8 cents a share on revenue of $223 million.

For 2003 he cut his outlook to revenue of $251 million and earnings of 15 cents a share from $259 million in revenue to 19 a share profit.

Also, Murphy said the company may have been overly optimistic when it said it expected that revenue in the first quarter, a typically weak period, would be about the same as fourth-quarter revenue may be overly optimistic.

"We do not see a large enough uptick in information technology spending to support such guidance, with a few exceptions," he said.

+REUTERS

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