For the quarter, the company now expects revenue to be down 12% from a year ago; previous guidance was for a 7%-9% drop. The company said it now sees GAAP profits of 53-55 cents a share, or 87-89 cents excluding acquisition related restructuring and acquisition adjustments. Previous guidance was for 65-75 cents, or 95 cents to $1.05 excluding one-time adjustments.
"This revised second quarter outlook reflects a weaker than expected demand environment, particularly in Europe, and a larger than expected impact from unfavorable changes in currency exchange rates," the company said. "The weaker demand environment prevented the company from overcoming this currency shift."
The company said it expects the same factors to affect the second half.
Lexmark will report full results on July 24.
The warning follows similar disclosures from other companies in related businesses: Disk-driver maker Seagate has warned, as has the chip-maker AMD. A number of players in both enterprise software and network equipment have also issued warnings on the June quarter. Many of those confessions involved concerns about demand in Europe and related currency factors.
Lexmark shares are down $3.61, or 14.9%, to $20.70.
Given the reflection on the printer business, you might guess that this would be bad news for Hewlett-Packard holders; and in fact HP shares are down 25 cents, or 1.3%, to $19.10 in early trading.
