Tech Stocks in Motion

Shares of Microtune(TUNE Quote) were among technology's losers Wednesday, falling 21% after the chipmaker posted solid third-quarter results but warned that fourth-quarter sales would be well below expectations.

The company earned $400,000, or 1 cent a share, on sales of $16.4 million. Analysts polled by Thomson First Call expected a loss of 2 cents a share on sales of $15.6 million. A year ago, the company reported a loss of $3.9 million, or 8 cents a share, on sales of $16.3 million.

For the fourth quarter, Microtune forecast fourth-quarter sales of $14.5 million to $15 million. Analysts had been expecting sales of $17.5 million. "Recently it has come to light that there is a considerable amount of excess cable modem inventory at one or more of our customers and their channels. As a result, our visibility into the cable modem market is quite cloudy, and we believe that the excess inventory situation will have a negative impact on our revenue in Q4 and Q1," the company said. Shares were trading down 98 cents to $3.76.

GSI Commerce(GSIC Quote) fell 18% after the company said it would delay its third-quarter earnings release because of potential accounting discrepancies. The company said some credits that were recorded during the company's fourth quarter of fiscal 2004 possibly should have been recorded during its fiscal 2005 year. GSI, a provider of e-commerce systems, said its internal auditor and controller discovered the problem in August.

Additionally, GSI said that a systemic control that's used to reconcile its accounts payable balance failed during the third quarter of fiscal 2005. As a result, the company had to change to a manual control to validate the account. "The failure of the systemic control may be a material weakness and the change to a manual control may have materially affected GSI Commerce's internal control over financial reporting," the company said.