Corsair Gaming Inc. shares fell in the extended session Thursday after the gaming-gear company forecast second-quarter revenue well below the Wall Street consensus while offering a hint of a more optimistic second half of the year.
Corsair
CRSR,
shares fell 11% after hours, following a 2.8% rise to close the regular session at $14.48.
The company said it expects second-quarter revenue of about $284 million, while analysts surveyed by FactSet were estimating an average of $350.2 million. Corsair is scheduled to report results Aug. 4 after the market closes.
“The first half of the year has been a challenging time, as we expected, with macroeconomic headwinds affecting consumer spending on gaming gear, especially in Europe,” said Andy Paul, Corsair’s chief executive, in a statement. “This has caused a buildup of inventory both in our warehouses as well as in the retail channel, thus causing our channel partners to delay ordering while they clear this excess.”
While the first half of the year proved to be a disappointment, the CEO said that healthy Amazon
AMZN,
Prime Day sales looked promising, and that he expects more gamers to build their own rigs in the second half of the year.
From April: The pandemic PC boom is over, but its legacy will live on
“We are pleased to see recent upticks in activity from enthusiasts looking to build gaming PCs, which use our component products, and GPU cards are now generally readily available at attractive prices,” Paul said.
A recent drop in cryptocurrency prices and mitigation of a global chip shortage has brought the actual price of gaming cards from companies such as Nvidia Corp.
NVDA,
and Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
AMD,
much closer to the manufacturer suggested retail price as secondhand cards flood the market and new ones are released. Paul noted that sales of Corsair components used to build gaming PCs surged 35% during Prime week, compared with a year ago.
“Overall, we believe the self-built Gaming PC market will begin to accelerate in the second half of 2022, and with new higher-power GPUs launching during the same period, we expect even stronger activity in 2023,” Paul said.
Paul’s forecast comes following recent estimates that quarterly global PC shipments saw their worst drop in at least a decade.
