Apple supplier Skyworks cuts sales, profit forecasts

Bloomberg

Skyworks Solutions Inc, a key Apple Inc supplier, cut sales and profit forecasts. Fiscal first-quarter revenue will be about $970 million, down from prior guidance of between $1 billion and $1.02 billion. Earnings, excluding certain items, will be $1.81 to $1.84 a share, versus a previous forecast of $1.91, the company said.
Chief Executive Officer Liam Griffin blamed the lowered outlook for the period ended December 28 on “unit weakness across our largest smartphone customers.” He didn’t mention Apple, but the iPhone maker is Skyworks’ biggest customer, accounting for about half of its revenue.
Skyworks gained more than 3 percent in extended trading after the update. “People were expecting a lot worse,” Woo Jin Ho, Bloomberg Intelligence senior analyst, said. “Some of the bad news was already baked in and things just seem to have gotten a little bit worse towards the end of the quarter.”
Skyworks gave its earlier first-quarter forecast on November 8, a few days before other Apple suppliers began raising concerns about disappointing iPhone sales. That presaged Apple’s first revenue guidance cut in almost two decades, which Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook announced last week.