Sound and fury signifying nothing.

That's kinda how I feel about PowerwaveTechnologies' (NASDAQ:PWAV) performance in the six months or so since I last wrote about this telecom equipment company. The opportunity for Powerwave to benefit from ongoing wireless capacity additions is still there; it's just that investors got ticked, scared, or both in the interim, because that growth wasn't going to come in a straight line.

Admittedly, the first quarter of this year was not exactly a banner performance. Though revenue was up 19% year over year, tech folks like to focus on quarter-to-quarter performance, and Powerwave's sales dropped 25% on that basis. That, in turn, led to problems with margins and a reported loss (though a small profit on an adjusted basis).

The villain in the piece was one of Powerwave's largest customers -- Cingular (a venture that is soon to be wholly owned by AT&T (NYSE:T)). Orders from Cingular were down 68% from the fourth quarter, and that's a tough blow for any small tech company to surmount. On the bright side, it doesn't look like Cingular really shifted the business to another customer, as rival Andrew (NASDAQ:ANDW) also had a tough quarter; rather, it seems this large customer was just a little slow on capital spending in the quarter.

I continue to like where Powerwave sits in terms of growth potential from the current wireless upgrade cycle. It does a sizable amount of business with Nokia (NYSE:NOK) and Siemens (NYSE:SI), as well as many other companies, and there's definitely more telecom capital spending coming from the likes of Cingular, Deutsche Telekom (NYSE:DT), and SprintNextel (NYSE:S), to say nothing of the eventual 3G rollout in China.

In case you didn't already know, this quarter is a good example of the risks and travails of small-cap tech investing. Professional investors (and many retail investors) have a hair-trigger panic button and are more than willing to dump shares on the sign of a slowdown in growth, even if it's a temporary slowdown. But their panic can be your opportunity to buy at a discount, and I still think this is an interesting name for investors who can stomach a little high-tech risk in their portfolios.

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Fool contributor Stephen Simpson has no financial interest in any stocks mentioned (that means he's neither long nor short the shares).