Majesco CEO quits as full-year forecasts plunge into loss

Shares in publisher Majesco have dropped almost 50 per cent after the firm's CEO and chairman, Carl Yankowski, announced his resignation in the wake of revised financial forecasts which predict a full-year loss for the company.

Yankowski has been with the company for less than a year, with his appointment last August being seen as a major boon to the emerging publisher thanks to his impressive corporate background with firms including Sony, Pepsi and Palm.

He will be replaced as chairman by Jim Halpin, the former CompUSA president and CEO who joined the Majesco board last October, and the firm has begun searching for a new CEO.

Yankowski's departure, described as a resignation "under a mutual agreement with the company" comes on the back of revised financial forecasts which show the company slipping into the red for the full year due to weak sales of some key titles and delays to others.

Weak sales in the summer period were singled out as the key reason for the lowered forecasts, with an official Majesco statement describing the summer as "exceptionally slow".

Two of the firm's recent titles, Psychonauts and Advent Rising, were recently noted by JMP Securities analyst Ingrid Ebeling as performing particularly poorly.

In addition to the weak sales of these titles, Majesco has also been forced to delay the launch of a key movie-based property - believed to be the Charlize Theron starring Aeon Flux - to next year in order to match the release of the film.

The company now expects to report full-year operating losses of $16 to $19 million on sales of $120 to $125 million - a reversal of its previous forecasts, which anticipated operating profits of $16 to $18 million on sales of $175 to $185 million.

The firm's stock - which trades on the ticker COOL - dropped by almost exactly 50 per cent in after-hours trading on the NASDAQ following the news, falling to under $3.25 - its lowest point in the past year.