Audience Halted, Soars 25%: Q4 Beats, Q1 View Crushes Estimates

Shares of smartphone audio processing technology vendor Audience (ADNC) were halted just after market close, right before the company reported Q4 revenue and earnings per share that topped analysts’ expectations, and forecast this quarter’s results significantly higher as well.

Revenue in the three months ended in December rose to $38.7 million, yielding EPS of 14 cents.

Analysts had been modeling $37 million and 20 cents.

For the current quarter, the company sees revenue in a range of $43 million to $46 million, and EPS of 15 cents to 19%. That is well above the consensus for $32 million and 1 penny per share.

CEO Peter Santos emphasized the company’s involvement during the quarter with the development of several devices, including Google‘s (GOOG) Motorola-brand “Razr I,” its “Nexus 10″ tablet, and Huawei‘s forthcoming “Ascend D2.”

Audience management will host a conference call�with analysts at 4:30 pm, Eastern time, and you can catch the webcast of it here.

As I wrote earlier this month, Audience has been on the comeback trail since last fall, when its shares tumbled after it disclosed Apple (AAPL) was dropping the company’s audio-processing technology from the iPhone, after having used it in the iPhone 4 and 4S.

Shares are expected to resume trading at 4:30 pm, Eastern time.

Update: The stock has resumed trading and is up $3, or 25%, at $15.22.

Update 2: Audience’s Santos was kind enough to chat with me by phone following the company’s conference call to discuss the mobile field and the company’s priorities. On the call, the company talked about how it is expanding beyond the phone and tablet market to new�PCs from�Dell�(DELL) that will be coming out soon.

Will there gadget market continue to have the same ceaseless parade of new gizmos? I asked, choosing to start with a rather obvious question.

“We are working with a pretty broad-base of customers of quite significant platforms, and you will see a steady stream of things from us. I think you will see for at least the next couple of years and beyond that pretty regular innovation in the form of new types of devices and capabilities. I believe that there is significantly more potential in terms of the kinds of experiences and capabilities taht tech can provide to people on devices they use, and the investment to bring those to market is going to be made.”

Is the smartphone market concerned about the steadily slowing rates of unit shipment growth?

“People are certainly concerned about it (shipment growth). Broadly, you are going to see slowing growth in smartphones, as we are approaching a point where in developed markets smartphone has swallowed the phone market whole; that does not conflict with the pattern of innovation that remains ahead of us in smartphone market. From our perch as a tech provider, while I think you will see tempering rates of growth in smartphone, because you will see high rate of innovation, you will see opportunities for us and OEMs who are winning the innovation battle to have really significant rates of growth.”

On the dominance of Apple and Samsung:

“People tend to think that Apple and Samsung have won, and it’s game over; I don’t believe that’s the case. There is so much pressure to innovate that it’s going to be very hard for market conditions to remain static. I’m not predicting bad things for those two companies, but the view market share will remain static is not well-informed. You could see at the OS level that there will be a few people who will win, but there is room at the OEM level and the tech provider level for high growth rates.”

We keep hearing about the rise of mid-priced and low-priced smartphones as being a crucial issue, especially in the emerging markets. Are you hearing a lot of talk about that, a lot of concern, from customers of yours?

“People are definitely preoccupied with questions of the mid-market. It is a topic that is very hotly discussed among OEMs today, and carriers around the world are paying attention. As an example, if you think about people using voice instead of touch to be able to interact with devices, that’s something that could move quite far down into the mid-market and below. Because there are cost pressures in those segments, as you move down the portfolio, there tends to be a process of removing functions to make the device cheaper. But if you start to see expectations by users, or demands by carriers, to provide interactions with voice, what you could start to see is advanced voice becomes a feature that is not taken out as you waterfall down the market segments.”

How should we think about Audience’s profile?

“The way you should think about Audience is a voice and audio and sound processing company. I personally believe that user interface is the most exciting place to be in technology today. Audience has created a really unique position in the market and value proposition around sound. That’s where all of our focus is today. Our view is that voice and audio and sound is going to have a very, very broad role in human interface on mobile devices. Anything you can think of in terms of sound coming into your device or coming out that would allow for interaction is somewhere in our road map and our portfolio. Put another way, if you think of the ability that humans have to comprehend and act on sound, or create sound, that’s where we see the bar is for sound capability. So, there’s a lot of headroom.”

Next in BP Spill Saga: Civil Trial That Could Cost Billions

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Now that a $4 billion plea deal has resolved BP's (NYSE: BP  ) criminal liability for the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill nearly three years ago, the company will turn its focus to a trial that could potentially cost it billions of dollars more in civil penalties.

At the conclusion of a hearing Tuesday that included emotional testimony and a�BP�executive's apology, a federal judge agreed to let the London-based oil giant plead guilty to manslaughter charges for the April 2010 deaths of 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon rig and pay the record amount of criminal penalties.

What the plea deal approved by U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance doesn't resolve, though, is the federal government's civil claims against�BP.

A trial scheduled to start Feb. 25 is designed to identify the causes of BP's well blowout, which triggered the deadly rig explosion and massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010. The first phase of the trial also is designed to assign percentages of blame to�BP�and its partners in the ill-fated drilling project.

BP�and the Justice Department have engaged in settlement talks that could resolve the civil claims against�BP�by the federal government and Gulf states before trial.

David Uhlmann, a University of Michigan law professor and former chief of the Justice Department's environmental crimes section, said it's reasonable to expect a civil settlement with the Justice Department to cost�BP�more than twice as much as the criminal settlement.

"There is tremendous incentive for both sides to settle," Uhlmann said, noting that�BP�would face much larger civil penalties if the government can convince the trial judge that the company acted with gross negligence before the deadly blowout.

Vance noted that the company already has racked up more than $24 billion in spill-related expenses and has estimated it will pay a total of $42 billion to fully resolve its liability for the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

BP�agreed in November to plead guilty to charges involving the workers' deaths and for lying to Congress about the size of the spill from its broken well, which spewed more than 200 million gallons of oil. Much of it ended up in the Gulf and soiled the shorelines of several states. The company could have withdrawn from the agreement if Vance had rejected it. The judge said the $4 billion criminal settlement is "just punishment" for�BP, even though the company could have paid far more without going broke. In accepting the deal, Vance also cited the risk that a trial could result in a much lower fine for�BP, one potentially capped by law at $8.2 million.

The criminal settlement calls for�BP�to pay nearly $1.3 billion in fines. The largest previous corporate criminal penalty assessed by the Justice Department was a $1.2 billion fine against drug maker Pfizer in 2009.

The plea deal also includes payments of nearly $2.4 billion to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and $350 million to the National Academy of Sciences. The two groups will administer the money to fund Gulf restoration and oil spill prevention projects.

The $4 billion in total penalties are 160 times greater than the $25 million fine that Exxon paid for the 1989 Valdez spill in Alaska, Vance noted.

Before she ruled, the judge heard an apology from a�BP�executive and emotional testimony from relatives of the 11 workers who died when BP's blown-out Macondo well triggered an explosion on the rig and started the spill.

"I've heard and I truly understand your feelings and the losses you suffered," Vance told the family members.

Keith Jones, whose 28-year-old son, Gordon, died in the rig explosion, said $4 billion isn't adequate punishment.

"It is petty cash to�BP," he told Vance. "Their stock went up after this plea deal was announced."

Billy Anderson, whose 35-year-old son, Jason, of Midfield, Texas, died in the blast, recalled the trauma of watching the disaster play out on television.

"These men suffered a horrendous death," he said. "They were basically cremated alive and not at their choice."

BP�America vice president Luke Keller apologized to the relatives of the workers who died and for the spill's environmental damage to the Gulf Coast.

"BP�knows there is nothing we can say to diminish their loss," he said. "The lives lost and those forever changed will stay with us. We are truly sorry."

A series of government investigations have blamed the blowout on time-saving, cost-cutting decisions by�BP�and its partners on the drilling project.

Most of the families of rig workers who were killed or injured in the explosion already have settled their claims against�BP, through a process separate from this plea deal.

BP�also has separately agreed to a settlement with lawyers for Gulf Coast residents and businesses who claim the spill cost them money.�BP�estimates the deal with private attorneys will cost the company roughly $7.8 billion.

The Justice Department also has reached a settlement with rig owner Transocean (NYSE: RIG  ) that resolves the government's civil and criminal claims over the Swiss-based company's role in the disaster.

Transocean agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of violating the Clean Water Act and pay $1.4 billion in civil and criminal penalties. U.S. District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo has scheduled a Feb. 14 hearing to decide whether to accept that criminal settlement. A different judge will decide whether to accept Transocean's civil settlement.

In other criminal cases, four current or former�BP�employees have been indicted.�BP�rig supervisors Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine are charged with manslaughter, accused of repeatedly disregarding abnormal high-pressure readings that should have been glaring indications of trouble just before the blowout.

David Rainey, BP's former vice president of exploration for the Gulf of Mexico, was charged with withholding information from Congress about the amount of oil that was gushing from the well.

Former�BP�engineer Kurt Mix was charged with deleting text messages about the company's spill response.

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