Needham & Company analyst James Ricchiuiti maintains Buy rating and lowers price target on Digimarc Corp. (NASDAQ: DMRC) to $33 (from $40), as the company reported 2016 fourth quarter losses, ‘larger than expected,” due to slower revenue growth with gross margins and EPS also missing consensus estimates.

Ricchiuiti comments, "DMRC after the close yesterday reported a slightly largerthan-expected Q4 loss resulting from slower revenue growth of 3%. As we have noted before, we believe investors should focus on the long-term opportunity of DMRC’s barcode technology rather than quarterly results, which are likely to remain highly variable at this early stage of commercial adoption of the Digimarc Barcode and Discover platform. Although the timing of customer adoption is difficult to forecast at this juncture, we were encouraged by the flurry of activity mgmt reported thus far in 2017 among large retailers and consumer product goods (CPG) companies. DMRC’s balance sheet remains solid giving it the flexibility to continue investing in sales and marketing and R&D to accelerate market adoption… Revenues up 3% to $5.0M, below consensus $5.5M and our $6.0M est. Gross margin came in at 60.4%, vs. our 61.6% estimate. Operating expense was lower than expected, with the net loss coming in at $0.55, versus Street expectations of a loss of $0.58 and our $0.57 loss estimate."