Fitbit’s holiday-quarter sales forecast misses estimates, shares plunge

Reuters even described Fitbit’s fourth-quarter guidance as being “dismal”, especially during a holiday quarter, a view the analyst mostly agrees with.

Shares in wearable tech firm Fitbit Inc (NYSE:FIT) slumped by more than 30% on Thursday after the wearable tech firm slashed its forecasts. Something that, if not on par with smartphones, would still see mass-market uptake and yield many billions in annual sales and profits for the market’s top players. The Next Day Volume after Earnings was reported as 37.55 Million.

Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter. Fitbit had a return on equity of 14.55% and a net margin of 5.76%.

Fitbit shares have decreased 57 percent since the beginning of the year. For one, sales in the Asia Pacific region are awful and getting worse.

“While we have been on the sidelines since February, wary on the second-half nature of the year, we did not anticipate a guide-down of this magnitude this early on in the holiday” season, she said in a research report. However it seems Fitbit ran into difficulties with the Flex 2 tracker, which resulted in having to write off a few million dollars due to production issues. Park said sales in Asia were “not what we had hoped” and the company is “hoping to refine our marketing based on continued research” in the region.

Finally, the company didn’t manage its new product transitions well this year.

A whopping 79% of Fitbit’s revenue during the third quarter came from the Blaze smartwatch and Alta tracker that it introduced during the first quarter along with the Flex 2 and Charge 2 trackers that it introduced in September.

“We believe the real upside for FIT is having products with a more compelling use case: digital health/connected fitness are those opportunities”, Oppenheimer analysts wrote, slashing their price target to $12 from $25. “That’s what we’re striving for internally”. But the company is facing growing competition from the Apple Watch Series 2, and low-priced rivals from China.

Shares slumped more than 30 per cent in extending trading on Wednesday to $8.90, and look set to hit record-low levels today. Longbow Research reaffirmed a “buy” rating and issued a $20.00 price objective on shares of Fitbit in a research note on Wednesday, August 3rd.

What happened with Fitbit this quarter?

Fitbit’s Q4 sales outlook targets 3% to 4% year-over-year growth for the Christmas shopping period. Of the repeat customers, approximately 20% were reactivations (customers who were inactive for 90 days or greater).

Park remained confident about that Fitbit would continue to benefit as the leader in the space as well as overall potential of the category. “Our business is in no danger of going away”.

It’s the kind of thing you don’t often hear CEOs needing to assert. And immediately on the next day after earnings announcement, the stock declined -18.83% and closed its trading session at $13.88.