Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over market movements, we do like to keep an eye on big changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.
What: Shares of Unisys Corporation (UIS 1.08%) dropped by more than 21% in Wednesday's trading to a new 52-week-low after the company announced weaker-than-expected second-quarter results.
So what: Unisys' quarterly revenue fell 6% year over year, to $806 million, which translated to a GAAP net loss of $12.1 million, or $0.24 per diluted share. On an adjusted basis -- which excludes $17.9 million of pension expenses -- Unisys turned in earnings of $0.11 per share. Analysts, on average, were looking for significantly higher adjusted earnings of $0.47 per share on sales of $851.65 million.
Now what: Unisys Chairman and CEO Ed Coleman elaborated that their Q2 results were hurt by "lower sales of the company's flagship ClearPath family of enterprise software and servers, which can vary significantly from quarter to quarter based on the timing of client transactions." Still, Coleman once again insisted the second half of 2014 should be stronger than the first, thanks to a combination of higher ClearPath sales, and increased traction in Unisys' Stealth cybersecurity and Forward! server offerings.
However, until those opportunities actually yield results, I fear investors may be in for more pain over the near term. For now, and even with shares trading at a seemingly cheap 5.8 times next year's expected earnings, I'm perfectly content continuing to watch Unisys' progress from the sidelines.
