Friday's Early Winners & Losers

SanDisk(SNDK Quote) shares tumbled after the Milpitas, Calif.-based company's third-quarter profit was pinched by plummeting flash-memory prices. The company said sales for the three months ended Oct. 1 surged 27% to $751 million, while analysts polled by Thomson First Call were looking for $737 million. Net income fell to $103.2 million or 51 cents a share, from $107.4 million, or 55 cents a share a year earlier. Excluding stock-compensation expense and the amortization of certain acquisition-related assets, SanDisk earned 61 cents a share, surpassing Wall Street estimates of 57 cents a share a year earlier. But investors focused on the more-than-60% drop in average selling prices per megabyte during the quarter. The company's gross margin fell to 32% from 37% a year earlier. The company said demand was strong in the third quarter for mobile flash chips; it now expects total megabytes sold in 2006 to grow by 200%. Shares were sliding $6.08, or 9.9%, to $55.65.

Ariad Pharmaceuticals(ARIA Quote) lost ground after the Cambridge, Mass.-based company said it intends to sell about 3.1 million shares of its stock in a public offering. The company said the underwriter will have an option to buy up to an additional 466,942 shares of Ariad's common stock to cover overallotments. All of the shares in the offering are being sold by Ariad. Credit Suisse Securities is acting as sole underwriter for the offering. Shares were falling 32 cents, or 6.2%, to $4.86.