Wild ride today for drugstore.com shareholders

drugstore.com, inc. (Public, NASDAQ:DSCM) shares fell to $1.75 before bouncing back to $2.19 before noon.  DSCM should finish the day down 10% after missing Wall Street’s expecations and revising its fiscal 2008 guidance.  So for investors, now what?

Let’s review the numbers (Bizjournals.com):

Q1 08 sales rose to $121 million from $110 million a year earlier, and reported a loss of $2.7 million, or a loss of 3 cents per share, which compares with a loss of $3.8 million, or a loss of 4 cents per share in 2007.

Q2 08 sales should come in between $118 million and $122 million and a loss in the range of $2 million to $3 million.

For the fiscal year, the company now expects results to range from a loss of $3 million to a profit of $1 million.  Terrible.

Analysts polled by Thomson Financial Network expected Q1 08 earnings of nothing per share and sales of $124 million. They expect Q2 08 net income of 1 cent per share and sales of $121.2 million and a fiscal 2008 profit of 2 cents per share and sales of $501.2 million.

DSCM brands include: drugstore.com(TM), Beauty.com(TM) and VisionDirect.com(TM).

Truth be told, shares of drugstore could keep heading down, the days of $8 a share are long over:

Investors hoping for a bounce should pray for a takeover or a massive buyback, even so, it probably won’t mean much for shareholders.

So what did the company have to say?

“Due to a challenging economic environment,” the company said, it’s revising its fiscal 2008 guidance to sales between $490 million and $500 million and projects either a loss up to $3 million or net income of up to $1 million.

drugstore.com is starting to sound like a penny stock, Masters save your money for better stocks.

Disclaimer: No positions in DSCM.