The New York-based company has still not filed its 2002 annual report with the SEC, and has only just produced preliminary figures for its second quarter to June 30, which shows that revenue rose 15% to $375 million. Originally, Symbol expected to file restated figures by the end of March, and then set a June deadline, the process has still not been completed.
While it is still growing strongly, it has trimmed back its revenue growth forecast for the year to 12% to 14%, down from its earlier estimate of 15% to 20%. Restatement of its previous figures shows that revenue over the 1998 to 2002 period was reduced by $223 million to $6.1 billion, and operating expense increased by $237 million to $2.2 billion.
Symbol said that during this period, the company was overly aggressive in establishing sales and earnings growth targets, routinely over-produced products, made premature and excessive shipments to the sales channel and generated numerous errors and irregularities in the books and records of the company.
Problems at the company led to the departure of the CFO last December, the chief accounting officer in March, while Dr Jerome Swartz quit as chairman, director and chief scientist in July after accepting responsibility for the fact that an accountancy fraud occurred during his tenure of office.
In June, Robert Korkuc, former chief accounting officer, pleaded guilty to securities fraud at a federal court in Islip, Long Island.
This article was based on material originally published by ComputerWire.
