Friday's Early Winners & Losers

Smart Modular Technologies(SMOD) soared in after-hours trading Thursday after the Fremont, Calif.-based company, which makes memory modules, beat Wall Street's fourth-quarter earnings expectations.

The company posted earnings of $15.7 million, or 25 cents a share, compared with $8.65 million, or 16 cents a share, a year ago. Sales surged 39% to $197 million. Analysts polled by Thomson First Call had expected the company to report earnings of 18 cents a share on revenue of $196.8 million. For the full year, the company reported earnings of $32.3 million, or 55 cents a share, compared with $26.2 million, or 49 cents a share for fiscal year 2005.

Sales totaled $707.4 million, up 16% from the previous year. Looking ahead, the company said it expects first-quarter sales to be in the range of $200 million to $210 million and earnings in the range of 19 cents to 20 cents a share. Wall Street is looking for earnings of 19 cents a share on $205 million in sales. Smart Modular was trading up 77 cents, or 7.72%, to $10.75.

Hartmarx(HMX) plummeted after the Chicago-based suitmaker slashed full-year earnings guidance, citing department store consolidation. The company made $490,000, or a penny a share, for the third quarter ended Aug. 31, down from the year-ago $6.6 million, or 18 cents a share. Sales fell to $139 million from $153 million a year earlier.

Hartmarx said it expects to make 8 to 10 cents a share for the fourth quarter and 28 to 30 cents for the year. Sales will be around $156 million for the quarter and $590 million for the year. The company had earlier forecast a profit of 50 to 55 cents a share on sales of $610 million to $615 million for the year.

"We are committed to reducing sales to the mainstream department store channel from 27% of total revenues in 2005 to roughly half of that in 2007," Hartmax said. "At the same time, we continue to look for opportunities to redeploy those assets." Shares were tumbling $1.40, or 18.18%, to $6.30.