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LONDON - Three profit warnings in four months combined with a plummeting stock price have cast a question mark over the future of the U.K.'s Pace Micro Technology plc as an independent company.
Europe's largest maker of set-top boxes - hardware devices that connect televisions to a digital signal carrying different channels - has been stung by troubles plaguing its customers in the digital- television industry. Woking, England-based Telewest Communications plc is in dire financial straits, London-based broadcaster ITV Digital is in administration, while New York-based NTL Inc. narrowly avoided collapse.
As a result, Pace Micro's full-year earnings plunged even further than expected. Pretax profit before amortization of goodwill and exceptional items for the year ending June 30 was pounds 13.1 million, compared with pounds 44.3 million the year before and with analysts' forecasts of pounds 16 million. Revenue was down almost one-third on the year, at pounds 351.8 million ($544.5 million).
And the sales contracts Pace Micro did manage to clinch were hardly lucrative. For example, Pace agreed to supply...