ATV Sales Hurting Arctic Cat (ACAT, PII)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Arctic Cat Inc. (NASDAQ: ACAT) is seeing shares come off the tracks in after-hours trading after the company previewed poor results.  The company places the blame on on lower than anticipated all-terrain vehicles sales.  This is attributed to continued weak retail sales, the reduction of a large planned retail customer order, and finally on a parts supply issue.

Arctic Cat now expects fourth-quarter diluted EPS of $0.00 to -$0.08 and net sales are now estimated to be $167 million to $169 million compared to $172.6 million in the prior-year fourth quarter.  First Call had estimates of $0.23 EPS and $198.9 million in revenues.  Analysts had only taken this down by $0.01 over the last ninety-day period, although analysts were mostly cautious anyway on this one.

The company now see reporting a net loss for the March 31, 2008 fiscal year in the range of $0.20 to $0.28, compared to year-ago diluted EPS of $1.15.

Shares are down some 18% at $6.01 in after-hours trading after closing up less than 1% at $7.37 in regular trading.  That will also be a new 52-week low under the prior $6.81 low if this holds.  While this would be easy to keep bashing, Arctic Cat’s stock had already sold off roughly 65% since last summer’s highs and are down far worse than this since early 2005.

Shares of larger competitor Polaris Industries, Inc. (NYSE: PII) are also lower by more than 2% at $42.75 in after-hours trading, after it also closed up nearly 1% in regular trading.

Jon C. Ogg
April 8, 2008

Jon Ogg produces the Special Situation Investing Newsletter.  He can be reached at [email protected] and he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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