Low guidance sinks NetApp shares - Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal:

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Sunnyvale, Calif.-based NetApp (Nasdaq: NTAP), a data storage company that employes roughly 700 inthe Triangle, plane on boosting its salee force by hundreds of workers in the next few months. The move is importanr so that NetApp can pick upmarketg share, CEO Dan Warmenhoven told analysts in a late Wednesday conferencde call. But that move, alongh with tight economic will drive profit in the firsty fiscal quarter below the consensus expectation of analystw polled byThomson Financial. NetApp expects earnings per share, excluding one-time items, of between 20 and 23 cents in its first fiscal quarter on revenuebetween $845 milliojn and $875 million.
The Thomson analystsw expect earnings per share of 27 cents on salesof $871 In its fiscal fourth quarter, NetApp said, one-tim e items sapped earnings. NetApp recorded income of $90 or 26 cents per diluted sharew - the same profit as last Excluding items, the company would have had incomeof $131 or 38 cents a share, compared to $114 or 30 cents a The items-adjusted figure beat analysts' expectations by 2 but investors recoiled at the first quarte r guidance. Shares of NetApp were down 5.6 to $24.
35, in mid-morning trading NetApp's Research Triangle Park operatiobn focuses mostly on engineering anddata