If you have been looking for a chance to buy Zebra Technologies (ZBRA 1.64%) at a reasonable price, this could be it.

Zebra reported first-quarter results on Tuesday morning, and the report itself was fine. Earnings were down 2% year over year while revenue fell 0.5%, and I would call that a flattish business trend -- relatively impressive, given the difficult global economy in these trying times. And it was enough to edge out Wall Street's consensus estimates by the skin of the zebra's teeth.

However, the stock still fell 11% on Tuesday, retreating to prices not seen since December last year. All told, Zebra's stock price is down 31% in 52 weeks. You see, market makers focused on Zebra's modest guidance targets instead of the solid first-quarter numbers. Second-quarter sales are expected to fall 10% year over year and earnings should come in roughly 30% lower.

That makes sense to some degree, because nobody likes to see management projecting shrinking sales and lower profits. I would argue that analysts and investors are overreacting, though.

Market makers heard the hoofbeats of weak guidance and immediately thought of horses -- as in, this is just another case of a weak order flow during a challenging economy. Don't go for extraordinary conclusions when everything points to a completely ordinary situation, right?

But in this case, you really should think of zebras. Brush this animal with a different comb because it's not the same. More to the point, Zebras' orders are not being canceled. Customers are just delaying them until they can find the budget to invest in Zebra's crucial data management tools again.

Zebra's CEO sheds light on modest guidance

I had a chance to quiz Zebra CEO Bill Burns over the phone, right after Tuesday's earnings report. I just had to know how modest the assumptions behind this soft guidance actually were.

Do these meek targets actually reflect the current market or is Zebra setting itself up to hit this lowball guidance out of the park in three months?

"I think that we're taking a relatively conservative view of the pipeline, knowing how much it is moved further out," Burns said. "They are not cancellations; our customers are still telling us, 'you know we still need what you're selling -- we just can't afford to buy a lot of it right now. So they are pushing their orders into the second half of next year, but they're still very interested in buying from us."

For example, Burns said, Zebra has overcome its supply-side challenges in the mobile computing segment and can fill plenty of orders on short notice, but many customers are pumping the brakes on their orders anyhow.

"In this case, it's not supply. We have supply, they don't have the budget to purchase it," he said. "We believe they can only wait so long, and when they do, we'll see spending again."

Zebra's secret weapon: A quiet order backlog

It looks like Zebra is building up a uniquely quiet backlog -- not of unfilled orders, but of surefire orders yet to be placed. Either way, this reservoir of future sales could transform into a torrential revenue flow when this inflation-burdened economy gets back on its feet again.

It's not exactly like Apple struggling to produce enough iPhones due to limited supply of the required microchips -- Zebra trotted through that stage in 2022. It's also not quite the same thing as Tesla building more factories because of outsize order volumes for the Model 3. Production capacity could very well become the limiting factor for Zebra's hardware sales in the next phase of this development.

Instead, the barcode systems and data management expert stands somewhere between these famous examples of traditional order backlogs, waiting until its clients can afford to invest in their own data-processing infrastructure again.

So if you were interested in Zebra's stock but waiting for an opportunity to buy in at a low price, this could be it. The stock is changing hands at 13 times forward earnings and 2.2 times trailing sales, both significantly below their long-term averages. I think we're looking at a temporary slowdown, with no signs of lasting damage to Zebras' long-term business prospects.