Advantest shares fall on wider second-quarter loss

Advantest declined 6.8 percent to 2,060 yen as of 9:58 a.m. on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, its biggest drop since March 30. The benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average lost 1.8 percent.

The net loss was 3.3 billion yen ($36.5 million) in the three months ended Sept. 30 from 2.8 billion yen a year earlier, the Tokyo-based company said yesterday after the market closed. The operating loss, or sales minus the cost of goods sold and administrative expenses, widened to 3.47 billion yen from 2.1 billion yen.

Advantest, along with chip-gear makers Applied Materials Inc. and Tokyo Electron Ltd., are facing a 45 percent drop in capital spending to $24.3 billion by makers of semiconductors worldwide this year, according to researcher Gartner Inc. President Haruo Matsuno last month forecast bookings will climb in the current quarter from a year earlier, joining rivals in reporting signs of recovery.

“Expectations for a rebound have been excessively reflected in the share price,” Tetsuya Wadaki, a Tokyo-based analyst at Nomura Holdings Inc., wrote in a report yesterday. “Real recovery will not come until after the end of 2009.”

Wadaki has a “reduce” rating on Advantest.

Advantest, which reported a record net loss last fiscal year, may break even on an operating basis in the quarter ending March 2010 if orders reach the 20 billion yen mark, Matsuno said last month. Bookings in the quarter totaled 14.4 billion yen, compared with 11.6 billion yen in the previous three months and 18.1 billion yen in the same period a year earlier, the company said yesterday.

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