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Last Update: 04-Apr-13 07:54 ET
Mitcham shares fall 2% following miss on earnings
Mitcham Ind (MIND $16.02 -0.41) reported second quarter earnings of $0.26 per share, $0.13 worse than the Capital IQ consensus of $0.39, while revenues fell 23.2% year/year to $28.4 million versus the $29.1 million consensus. Board of Directors has authorized a share repurchase program for up to 1.0 million shares of common stock through December 31, 2014. "We anticipated that this year's Q4 was going to be substantially below Q4 of last year; however, it still did not meet our expectations. We experienced later than expected starts to the winter seasons in both Canada and Russia, with many projects in those regions not beginning until mid to late January, whereas normally Russia begins in mid-December and Canada in early January. Had projects in those areas started within normal time frames, we believe our Q4 results would have been more in line with our expectations, if not exceeding them." "We anticipate improved results in fiscal year 2014, and the first quarter is off to a good start. At this point, we expect both Canada and Russia to be stronger than last year, but this expected increase depends on, in large part, to what extent certain projects extend into April. There is a substantial amount of seismic work pending in Latin America, and we have several jobs ready to begin as soon as our customers are able to satisfy the various permitting and regulatory requirements. The permitting and regulatory delays experienced by our customers in that region remain a concern, but we expect Latin America to be an area of strong activity for us in FY14, especially beyond Q1. In Europe, there are signs of improvement, and we have bids pending that would utilize much of our equipment in the area for a large part of FY14. Marine leasing activity is expected to remain steady throughout FY14, driven by ongoing strong fundamentals in the marine seismic market.
