Creative posts $100 million Q3 loss

Creative Technology - the folk behind the SoundBlaster cards - has posted a $101 million loss for its third quarter, compared to a net income of $88.3 million in Q3 last year.

It's not the company's fault though, claims president Craig McHugh. This loss included one-off charges of $31 million and the stock market nobbled its investments, which fell $75.4 million. With losing this money, it would actually just have made money, the company said.

Sales fell from $330 million last year to $263 million this year, but these were in line with expectations, the company said.

As for the nine months of fiscal 2001, sales are down to $994.4 million from $1.036 billion last year.

"Between the difficulty of the economic climate and the restructuring of our businesses, this was a challenging quarter," said Craig. "However, we achieved some important successes during the period. We made significant reductions in our operating expenses that will better position us going forward. At the same time, we met our revenue target as we continued to generate strong demand for retail audio products. We substantially reduced our inventory level, achieving our target of net inventory of $200 million at the end of the quarter."

The company's chairman and CEO SimWong Hoo was naturally upset about losing over $70 million on their investments: "During the quarter, we sustained, for the first time, a net loss from our investment portfolio." But here comes the excuse: "The $75 million write-down from our investment portfolio should be taken in the perspective that we posted realized gains of $103.4 million in fiscal year 2000." That's alright then.

Creative also bought back about 892,000 of its shares for $8.6 million. ®