Aspeon Restating Quarterly Results; Expects Bigger Loss

Aspeon Inc. said Friday that it will restate its quarterly results for the fiscal year ended in June and expects a wider loss than previously estimated.

The Irvine company, which sells point-of-sale computers for the food-service industry, said results will be adjusted because some sales may have been recorded prematurely--when some products were shipped rather than at the time of installation.

The focus is on sales of a unit that is obligated to provide installation services.

Aspeon reported a loss of $1.2 million for its third quarter, and net income of $1 million for the second quarter and $600,000 for the first quarter. The adjustments will reduce pretax results by $237,000 in the third quarter, $160,000 in the second quarter and $99,000 in the first three months, chief executive Richard Stack said.

In July, Aspeon Inc. said it expected to report a fourth-quarter loss of $8.7 million to $9.4 million, including charges of $4.2 million, on revenue of $19 million. At the time, the company said it would take a fourth-quarter charge of $3.9 million from the reduction of senior management personnel in a unit, and a $300,000 write-down of assets from an agreement to sell a foreign unit.

For fiscal 2000, the company projected a loss of $4.9 million to $5.3 million, or 52 cents to 57 cents a share.

Analysts estimated that the company’s losses would total 34 cents a share for the fourth quarter and 30 cents a share for the year, according to a First Call/Thomson Financial survey.

Aspeon’s stock on Friday fell 84 cents to $1.72 a share in Nasdaq trading.

Dow Jones Newswires was used in compiling this report.