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SemiLEDs shares slide 35 p.c on profit warning

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CIOL Bureau
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LOS ANGELES, USA: Shares of SemiLEDs Corp slid 35 percent on Thursday after the Taiwanese LED maker said pricing pressure would hurt results in the current quarter.

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The news weighed heavily on shares of rival LED makers, including Cree Inc, Veeco Instruments Inc and Rubicon Technology Inc, though J.P. Morgan analyst Christopher Blansett said the weak outlook was specific to SemiLEDs.

"This heightened (price) pressure was mostly concentrated at one customer and this customer's primary exposure appears to be in the camera flash segment," Blansett wrote in a client note. "This ... is not a proxy for other areas of the LED market like general lighting."

SemiLEDs sells its blue, green and ultraviolet LED chips to customers in China, Taiwan and other parts of Asia. The light emitting diodes are used in street lights and other lighting applications.

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The company reported first-quarter net income of $3.8 million, or 11 cents a share, compared with a profit of $363,000, or break-even, a year ago. First-quarter revenue rose 94 percent to $13 million.

For the fiscal second quarter, SemiLEDs expects net income of $1.6 million to $2.6 million or 6 cents to 9 cents a share on revenue of $10.5 million to $12.5 million.

SemiLEDs went public in December at $17 a share in an offering that was oversubscribed more than 10 times.The stock has traded as high as $32.12 but closed at $18.76 on Thursday, down $9.87 or 34.5 percent.

Shares of Cree fell $3.74, or 5.4 percent, to close at $65.46 and Veeco's stock slid $2.10, or 4.2 percent, to close at $47.57. Rubicon's stock dropped 38 cents, or 1.6 percent, to close at $22.87

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