By Staff Report Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011

Shares of Inphi Corp. soared more than 13 percent in day trading on Aug. 23, before plummeting almost 17 percent in after-hours trading as the company issued a statement saying it’s lowering its revenue outlook for the second half of the year.

The semiconductor company said in a statement that it has recently become aware of a likely shipping delay for some of its products, “due to industry events outside of its control,” and a slower-than-anticipated rate of orders currently being booked by customers for the third quarter.

The firm chopped its third-quarter revenue outlook at least 25 percent, predicting $16 million to $18 million in sales next quarter, compared to the $22 million to $24 million it had predicted in July.

It also said that while it had previously predicted fourth-quarter sales growth of 10 percent to 20 percent over the high end of the third quarter, it’s now withdrawing that outlook and that it no longer expects significant sequential fourth-quarter revenue growth.

“Future revenues are expected to grow once next-generation server platforms are shipping in production volumes. The company’s outlook also assumes that the economy does not continue to deteriorate and that sales of older generation of platforms contract modestly based on currently expected customer ordering patterns in anticipation of shipments of the new platform,” Inphi said in its statement.

It has also decided to discontinue the sale of some legacy products in Taiwan it had acquired to save on restructuring expenses, it said. The Taiwanese site will likely be retooled as a design-only site, Inphi said.

Inphi is based in Santa Clara but maintains a large engineering force and significant operations in Thousand Oaks. It went public in November 2010, initially watching its share price soar out of the gate. Shares were trading in the $17 range as recently as July, but have dropped to the $10 range in recent weeks.

Its shares dropped 20 percent on July 20 on news of its second-quarter earnings, which were up 13.7 percent to $24 million but didn’t meet analyst targets.

“The near-term outlook for the September quarter is not as promising as we had hoped,” Inphi CEO Young K. Sohn told investors in the July earnings conference call.

Inphi shares were trading at $8.72, down 16.95 percent, or $1.78, after hours on Aug. 23 on news of its revised business outlook.