Northern, WI 4/24/12 (StreetBeat) -- Software maker Symantec Corp (Nasdaq: SYMC) cut its fourth-quarter outlook and forecast a double-digit decline in first-quarter revenue as it signed fewer large contracts, sending its shares down more than 9 percent.The company's shares, which closed at $18.07 on Monday on the Nasdaq, fell 9.4 percent, or $1.71, to $16.37 in morning trading on Tuesday.
The company, best known for its Norton anti-virus product, said it now expects a quarterly profit of about 38 cents per share, down from its previous forecast of 41 cents to 42 cents per share.
It said revenue would be about $1.68 billion, compared with its previous outlook of $1.72 billion to $1.73 billion.
"Approximately 60 percent of our license revenue typically comes from our storage and server management businesses," Symantec Chief Executive Enrique Salem said on a call with analysts on Tuesday.
"In the fourth quarter, large contracts from these businesses generated lower dollar values than expected," he said, adding that "we definitely saw a tougher compare" because of the number of very large deals in March 2011.
Symantec sells software and services that help consumers and businesses secure and manage their information and identities.
Its applications handle virus protection, data backup and recovery, intrusion detection, data loss prevention, spam control, content filtering and remote server management.
For its first fiscal quarter, which runs through June, it expects revenue to be in a range of "down half a percent or up half a percent," Chief Financial Officer James Beer said, adding that excluding items EPS he anticipated a drop between 5 percent and 7.5 percent.
Revenue in the first quarter is expected to decline 24 percent to 28 percent, but Beer predicted the company would achieve full-year revenue growth of 8.7 percent.
"I still see health in the business going forward and my expectations are that we will see an increased number of transactions or deals that will go to the balance sheet," Salem said.
The company will report final results on May 2.
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