HTC issues Q2 profit warning. Blames weak European sales, US Customs delays
By Vlad Bobleanta on 06 Jun 12HTC’s sales woes aren’t over just yet, despite the company posting some pretty encouraging results for February and March (following a few very bad months). March was the last month of Q1, and Q2 was going to be all about the One series of smartphones, unveiled at MWC. Naturally, sales of those devices were supposed to help HTC’s results in the short term.
While that probably did happen after all, the extent to which it helped HTC’s bottom line won’t be as great as previously expected. HTC has just put out a profit warning, essentially letting us know that its past guidance for the Q2 2012 outlook has been wrong.
The ‘old’ numbers that HTC was hoping to achieve for the whole of the second quarter were NT$ 93.6 billion in revenue (US$ 3.13 billion), a gross margin of 29%, and an operating margin of 11.2%.
The Taiwanese company now expects to have a revenue level of NT$ 91 billion (US$ 3.04 billion), a 27% gross margin, and an operating margin of 9%.
The blame falls on weaker than expected sales in Europe, as well as US Customs delaying the sales of some HTC smartphones in the US (most notably Sprint’s HTC Evo 4G LTE and AT&T’s HTC One X). The reasoning for that was that there was a need to make sure that HTC’s new devices don’t infringe on a software patent held by Apple and upheld by the ITC.
Of course, there’s still almost one whole month left in this quarter, but we probably shouldn’t expect stellar sales by HTC during June. Otherwise it may have been able to make up those lost sales suffered last month. All in all, the One series looks like a definite step in the right direction for the Taiwanese company, but it wasn’t the golden ticket to recovery that it was meant to be.
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- HTC sold almost 10 million handsets in Q1 2011, mostly Android-based
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