RadioShack Falls After Unexpected First-Quarter Loss

RadioShack Corp. (RSH) tumbled to its lowest price in 31 years after the consumer-electronics retailer reported an unexpected first-quarter loss, hurt by falling U.S. demand for mobile phones and laptop computers.

The shares declined 11 percent to $5.34 at the close in New York, the lowest price since Feb. 24, 1981. Fort Worth, Texas- based RadioShack has declined 45 percent this year.

Chief Executive Officer Jim Gooch plans to open about 50 stores in Mexico and step up marketing of mobile phones after a same-store sales decline of 4.2 percent. Total revenue slipped less than 1 percent to $1 billion, hurt by a 6.9 percent sales drop at company-owned U.S. stores, RadioShack said today in a statement.

“We were expecting bad, just not this bad,” Anthony Chukumba, an analyst at BB&T Capital Markets in New York, wrote today in a note to clients. He rates the shares hold. “Management faces an uphill climb to turn things around.”

The net loss in the three months ended March 31 was $8 million, or 8 cents a share, compared with profit of $35.1 million, or 33 cents, a year earlier. Analysts projected profit of 4 cents a share, the average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

To contact the reporter on this story: {Lauren Coleman-Lochner} in New York at llochner@bloomberg.net; Chris Burritt in Greensboro at cburritt@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Robin Ajello at rajello@bloomberg.net