Hutchinson Technology stock, which dropped 16 percent Tuesday in anticipation of the firm's first-quarter earnings report, rose more than 2 percent in after-hours trading when the loss proved to be far lower than Wall Street had been expecting.
The Hutchinson, Minn., maker of disk-drive components lost $6.5 million, or 27 cents a share, in the first quarter. But excluding $1 million in severance costs and $1 million in noncash interest expense, the adjusted loss was $4.5 million, or 19 cents a share. Analysts had been expecting an adjusted loss of 49 cents.
First-quarter revenue was $63.7 million, slightly less than the $64.4 million analysts had expected.
The first-quarter results were released after the market closed. The company's stock, which had closed Tuesday at $2.29, down 44 cents or 16.1 percent, rose 5 cents, or 2.2 percent, to $2.34 in after-hours trading.
Analysts who follow Hutchinson Technology could not be reached Tuesday.
Hutchinson Technology has been struggling for more than three years as a result of a downturn in its business that began in late 2008 as the global economic crisis hit. That was followed in 2011 by floods in Thailand that closed a large portion of its manufacturing space there. Widespread layoffs followed.
Much of its current troubles are related to a worldwide slowdown in the market for computer disk drives. Hutchinson makes critical disk-drive components called "suspension assemblies" that hold reading and writing chips above rapidly spinning magnetic disks.
In July, Hutchinson posted a wider-than-expected third-quarter loss that sent its stock tumbling. At the time, analyst Mark Miller of Noble Financial Capital Markets predicted the firm would need at least a year to return to profitability.
