Stratasys sued after earnings disappointment

Days af­ter investors pum­meled Stratasys Ltd. for post­ing sur­pris­ing­ly dis­mal earn­ings re­sults, the 3-D print­ing firm wel­comed a slight re­prieve in its stock de­cline. How­ever, the down­ward slide start­ed a­gain Fri­day as the first of sev­er­al threat­ened law­suits was filed.

The law firm Rob­bins, Gel­ler Rudman & Dowd sued Stratasys, al­leg­ing it vio­lat­ed Security and Exchange rules by in­flat­ing earn­ings fore­casts for 2014. Oth­er firms launched in­ves­ti­gat­ions this week, seek­ing plain­tiffs who also might be in­ter­est­ed in su­ing Stratasys.

The brou­ha­ha start­ed Tues­day when Stratasys sur­prised investors with news that it would take a $100 mil­lion charge for the fourth quar­ter and suf­fer a loss for the en­tire fis­cal 2014 year. Of­fi­cials said they now ex­pect to lose $116 mil­lion to $129 mil­lion, or $2.32 to $2.58 a share.

The Eden Prairie man­u­fac­tur­er took the good­will im­pair­ment charge re­lated to its MakerBot con­sum­er print­er busi­ness. Stratasys bought MakerBot in 2013 for $400 mil­lion. The charge may ex­ceed MakerBot's es­ti­mat­ed annu­al rev­e­nue.

Four Wall Street ana­lysts this week down­grad­ed Stratasys' stock from buy to hold. As of Fri­day, only Ga­bel­li & Co. bucked the trend, up­grad­ing its rat­ing to "buy."

The stock im­plod­ed Tues­day, drop­ping from $80.06 to $51.75, be­fore clos­ing at $57.36. That's a level not seen since 2012. The stock re­cov­ered early Fri­day to $63, but then fell a­gain af­ter the law­suit was filed. It closed Fri­day at $61.37 a share.

Stratasys of­fi­cials could not be reached for com­ment on the lat­est de­vel­op­ments.

"Stratasys' pros­pects for 2015 and be­yond are strong," he said. "We con­tin­ue to see ad­di­tive manu­fac­tur­ing be­ing used to trans­form manu­fac­tur­ing pro­cess­es across a wide range of sec­tors, aug­ment­ing our lead­ing po­si­tion in prototyping ap­pli­ca­tions. We are also ex­cit­ed about our op­por­tu­ni­ty to build upon MakerBot's lead­ing po­si­tion in desk­top 3-D print­ing."

Stratasys has been a fast-grow­ing com­pany and a long time Wall Street favorite giv­en its booming tech­nol­o­gy, which uses com­puters, CADD soft­ware and melt­ed plas­tic to in­ex­pen­sive­ly man­u­fac­ture three-di­men­sion­al parts and pro­ducts.

Stratasys makes com­mer­cial and con­sum­er 3-D print­ers and sep­a­rate­ly manu­fac­tures pro­ducts for cus­tom­ers on a con­tract ba­sis. Cus­tom­ers in­clude General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co., and Delta Air Lines.

Stratasys has dual head­quar­ters in Re­ho­vot, Is­ra­el, and in Eden Prairie.