Wireless and microwave communications equipment manufacturer California Amplifier (NASDAQ:CAMP) surged more than 40% today on news that its third-quarter earnings were up more than 200% over the same quarter last year. The company raised guidance for the next quarter up to $0.18 to $0.24 cents per share and announced the acquisition of privately held Vytek, for $78 million in stock.
All in all, that's a pretty substantial turnaround for CalAmp, which spent most of 2001 recovering from a one-two punch. First, its wireless Internet market -- led by a proposed deployment by Sprint (NYSE:FON) of CalAmp transmitters as customer premises equipment -- collapsed along with the rest of telecom. Then, CalAmp got socked when its CFO departed amid reports that the books had been cooked.
And they had been. CalAmp shares didn't trade for nearly three months while the company cleaned up the mess and made the necessary restatements of its results. CalAmp has tried to wipe most of the evidence of this sordid past from the record. A look at its press release on its web site shows stories going back as far as July 2001 -- after the company resumed trading.
It's been a long climb back, but with the capital markets opening up ever so slightly, CalAmp's position as a leading provider of customer premises for microwave is paying off. According to the company's conference call, accessed courtesy of CCBN, CalAmp's acquisition of Vytek adds a "substantial customer base," including Hewlett Packard (NYSE:HWP), Verizon (NYSE:VZ), Lexmark (NYSE:LXK), and Nokia (NYSE:NOK).
Most impressive, however, is the improvement of the company's cash position by more than $2 million, along with a substantial decrease in long-term debt from $12.5 million to $9.8 million. As always, we'll withhold final judgment on the quarter until we see the cash flow statement. And frankly, I'm not convinced that the capital telecommunications spending market is out of the woods.
But there should be no doubt that wireless Internet 802.11(b) adoption and demand at the consumer level has been one of the few bright spots. That's CalAmp's sweet spot, and it isn't so unreasonable to expect its renaissance to continue.
