Web discounter Overstock.com Inc on Friday posted a wider-than-expected quarterly loss, hurt by delays in some projects and higher expenses.
The company, which aims to compete with Web veterans Amazon.com and eBay Inc, reported a loss of $14.2 million, or 75 cents per share, in the third quarter compared with a loss of $3 million, or 16 cents per share, a year ago.
Analysts polled by Reuters Estimates on average expected it to post a loss of 51 cents a share.
Overstock.com's share price fell $1.70, or 5 percent, to $31.22 in Nasdaq trade. Shares are down more than 50 percent this year - and down more than 25 percent since August 10, the day before Overstock began a legal tussle with a hedge fund manager it accuses of trying to drive down its stock.
"My bad," President Patrick Byrne said in a statement about the worse-than-expected results. "I bit off more technology projects than my colleagues could chew." Overstock said third-quarter total revenue rose 64 percent to $169.3 million from $103.4 million, while gross bookings rose 72 percent to $196.4 million.
But expenses also climbed steeply, hitting $36 million compared with $16.8 million a year ago.
Given the results, "some will criticise me for taking my eye off the ball to pursue a jihad," Byrne said in the earnings release.
Byrne's reference was apparently to a lawsuit Overstock has filed against hedge fund manager David Rocker, his firm Rocker Partners and partner Marc Cohodes, along with the Arizona research firm Gradient Analytics, that essentially charges them with conspiring to drive Overstock's shares down.
The lawsuit claims that Rocker was behind "a wide-scale predatory campaign of knowingly distributing false, and overtly biased, written reports about Overstock to disparage Overstock and enrich themselves."
Rocker is well known as a short-seller, an investor who bets on declining stock prices. A lawyer for Rocker has denied Overstock's allegations.
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