Oclaro Predicts Dim 2012 for Optical

Oclaro Inc. (Nasdaq: OCLR) says optical-components demand isn't likely to improve in the second half of the year, an outlook that led the company to speed up its integration with recently acquired Opnext Inc.

"It's probably going to be similar across the optical space as other folks come out" with earnings, Oclaro CFO Jerry Turin said on Tuesday's earnings call.

A slowdown in China's telecom buildouts, compared with March demand, and continued economic troubles in Europe are primarily to blame, CEO Alain Couder said on the call.

Oclaro's prediction of a flat second half matches what some systems vendors have said, namely that spending looks cautious due to the teetering economy.

Oclaro and Opnext had talked about saving $35 million to $45 million per year within 18 months of their merger, which closed last week. (See Oclaro & Opnext Complete Merger.)

Oclaro now says it's found a way to cut $9 million in the December quarter, which would multiply out to $36 million per year. In other words, they'll get to their original goal within just a few months and will shoot for the $45 million-per-year mark within 18 months.

Nothing radical seems to be in the plan, other than a possible acceleration of layoffs. Oclaro didn't say how many.

Part of the savings will come from eliminating overlapping product development efforts. Specifically, Opnext's 100Gbit/s module will take precedence over Oclaro's, because Opnext's "was more advanced," Couder said. The engineering team will now work on adding some Oclaro components to that module.

The only other major overlap was in tunable XFP modules, where it's Oclaro's design that will prevail, Couder said.

For its fourth quarter, which ended June 30, Oclaro reported a net loss of $3.9 million, or $0.08 per share, on revenues of $104.4 million.

Non-GAAP losses of $0.21 per share were worse than the $0.15 per share that analysts expected, according to Thomson Reuters . Revenues were pretty close to the $105.7 million predicted.

— Craig Matsumoto, Managing Editor, Light Reading

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