FLASH: Acme Packet Destroyed on EPS Warning

-30%

Co issues downside Q3 guidance and Co also reaffirmed 2011 EPS of $1.14-1.18 vs. $1.13 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; reaffirms revs of $315-320 mln vs. $325.2 mln consensus. Co said, “While we remain confident in our second half growth plans, our Q3 results were adversely impacted by a very large opportunity at one of the two largest service providers in North America. We now expect this opportunity to close in the first half of Q4 and we remain confident in our ability to execute on our full year business outlook. I continue to believe we are well positioned to leverage the broad, multi-year, secular growth drivers associated with the global transition from TDM to IP for real time communications like voice and video. The co was recently selected as the session border controller supplier for a major universal voice platform at this Tier-1 service provider in the United States. This platform is initially designed to support the existing customer’s “over-the-top” and wireline service offerings and will become a key infrastructure component to their Voice over Long Term Evolution offering. This platform is expected to become one of the largest such deployments in North America, supporting over 100 million subscribers. The initial deployment, which the co estimates will support ~5 mln subscribers, was expected to close in Q3 of 2011. However, during the final stage of Q3, the orders associated with this initial deployment were delayed to Q4. Accordingly, the co now expects this opportunity to close in the first half of Q4 of 2011.