(Bloomberg) -- Symbotic Inc. shares tumbled as much as 39% on Wednesday after the warehouse automation company cut its first-quarter revenue forecast and said it was unable to file its annual filing due to accounting errors.
The company, which went public through a merger with a SoftBank Group Corp.-backed SPAC, cut its first-quarter revenue expectations to between $480 million and $500 million, from an earlier target range of $495 million to $515 million. The lowered target also missed the average analyst estimate of $508.4 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The firm’s AI-enabled warehouse automation platform counts the likes of Walmart Inc., Target Corp. and Albertsons Cos Inc. as customers, according to its website.
Symbotic said in a statement that its unable to file its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the 2024 fiscal year by the prescribed date, due to needing “additional time to complete its assessment of the financial impacts of correcting an error related to system revenue recognition and the impacts of that error on internal controls over financial reporting.”
Furthermore, “Symbotic identified errors in its revenue recognition related to cost overruns that will not be billable on certain deployments, which additionally impacted system revenue recognized in the second, third, and fourth quarters of fiscal year 2024.”
The latest disclosures come after the company, which boasts SoftBank and Walmart as its largest investors, was targeted by at least a couple of short reports in recent months.
SoftBank’s Vision Fund segment flipped to a loss in the June quarter from a profit a year earlier, hurt by declines in the share prices of publicly-listed portfolio companies including Symbotic.
The update also triggered a downgrade at D.A. Davidson & Co. analyst Matt Summerville to cut his rating on the stock to neutral from buy, saying “it is rational to move to the sidelines on the name until these matters are sorted out.”
Summerville noted that he has “a hard time believing there is anything nefarious in nature associated with these restatements.” This is a rapidly growing firm and “this growth has been accompanied by various forms of ‘growing pains.’”
(Updates stock move, adds DA Davidson downgrade, stock chart)
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