Shares in the Card Guard Medical Technology company lost half their value on Monday after the company cut its sales forecast for 2002.

The news dragged Card Guard's share price down by more than 52 per cent at the close of trading on Monday at the Zurich stock exchange to SFr8.05 from Friday's close of SFr16.90.

Card Guard, which is based at Schaffhausen, said in a statement on Monday that it expected full year sales to drop to $70 million (SFr103.32 million). Sales last year totalled $93 million.

It had earlier forecast 20 per cent sales growth for 2002 even in a worst-case scenario.

More conservative terms

The company, which is active in remote health monitoring systems, said that the delivery of technology products for large projects would be subject to more conservative commercial terms, with the aim of reducing mid- and long-term receivables.

Shorter payment conditions in large-scale projects would have a slowdown effect on revenues, but would at the same time reduce the project-related receivables, the statement said.

Card Guard said it had not completed an $11 million order from India in the second quarter because it had not received sufficient payment guarantees.

It added that as a result of the decision to demand quick payment for large orders, preliminary orders for the second quarter would amount to about $12.5 million.

The company, which became Swiss last year after moving from Israel, said it would start launching unspecified cost-cutting measures from the third quarter onwards.

swissinfo with agencies

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