Wireless Facilities Shares Tumble as Metricom Cancels Contract

Shares of

Wireless Facilities

(WFII)

fell to their 52-week low Friday as the company received notice that customer

Metricom

(MCOM)

was canceling a contract.

Shares fell $4.25, or 24.8%, to $12.88 in recent

Nasdaq

trading. Its previous low was $16.50, and its 52-week high is $163.50.

Metricom, which provides mobile wireless data access to corporate networks and the Internet, had engaged Wireless Facilities to provide radio frequency engineering and deployment services for Metricom's data network buildout.

Wireless, which deploys and manages wireless networks and specializes in telecommunications outsourcing, said forecasted revenue shouldn't be impacted more than 8% in the first quarter and 4% in the second. One analyst polled by

First Call/Thomson Financial

is calling for revenue of $87.4 million in the first quarter and $95.2 million in the second quarter.

"While we are obviously disappointed by today's announcement, we will move as quickly as possible to redeploy our teams,'' Wireless said in a statement. "Metricom has indicated to us that it anticipates restarting its market buildouts at some point in the future and we are hopeful that we will be part of that opportunity.''