GPS Records Success despite fall in Stock Value of SiRF Technology

The latest report on stock activities on Wall Street of the last quarter might after all not be a favorable one especially to investors who stake their lot on SiRF's values. It was revealed on Monday night that the last quarter of the just concluded year that there were some shortcomings on the values traded for that quarter and as if that was not enough the guidance report made available for the first quarter of this year is not too impressive and some financial analysts reacted to this as far below what they had expected from such company of that caliber.

Not too long when trading of SiRF' stock closed at $16.27 per share on the Nasdaq, the company published its quarterly earnings for the last quarter of the old year and this has been the policy of the company to release financial news before or after the closure of the markets.

In a related story, in the after-hours trading a sell-off ensued and the price of SiRF stock nosedived, opening today at $8.15 per share. It continued to drop today; late this morning (Eastern Standard Time), SiRF shares were selling at $7.87 per share, a drop of more than 50 percent since Monday afternoon's close. In that time some 28.6 million shares had changed hands; the stock's normal trading volume is 2.68 million shares in a day.

According to the report, SiRF's net revenue for Q4 was $100.4 million, an increase of 35.3 percent from $74.2 million reported in Q4 2006. Net revenue for the year was $329.4 million, an increase of 33 percent from $247.7 million reported in fiscal 2006. Gross margin in Q4 2007 was 48.1 percent, however, as compared to 54.7 percent in the year-ago period. For the year SiRF posted a gross margin of 50.9 percent, as compared to 54.8 percent in fiscal 2006. Net income for the most recent quarter was $700,000, or 1 cent per diluted share, based on 64.3 million diluted weighted average shares outstanding. This compares with net income of $9.1 million, or 16 cents per diluted share, based on 56.1 million diluted weighted average shares outstanding, in the last quarter of 2006.

However, GPS chip maker were able to record a profit for the Q4, and based on 55.5 million diluted weighted average shares outstanding, the resulting net loss for fiscal 2007 was 10.4million ( about 19 per cent diluted share.)

While commenting on the report of the Q4, Michael Canning, SiRF president and CEO, said that "This was a good Quarter for SiRF fueled by strong seasonal demand for GPS location-enabled consumer products, and we reported record growth in revenue and units. However, our gross margin performance was negatively impacted by a combination of competitive market pricing and a shift of product mix".