NEW YORK (AP) -- Identity-card maker LaserCard Corp. stock fell Wednesday as the company's Italian national ID-card program remained uncertain due to delays caused by recent elections.
Shares of LaserCard fell $2.39, or 13 percent, to $16.01 in midday trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
"The authorization for full implementation of Italy's national citizen ID card is awaiting a final ministerial signature and publication in the government's legislative record, so the exact timing of volume issuance remains uncertain," said Richard Haddock, chief executive.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company remained cautious about providing any projections regarding the next significant card order for the program, he said.
Romano Prodi became prime minister of the country Wednesday, forming Italy's government more than a month after his center-left coalition narrowly won parliamentary elections ousting Silvio Berlusconi's center-right bloc.
The government was scheduled to be sworn in Wednesday afternoon, but Prodi must still win a confidence vote in the Senate, probably on Friday, and another in the lower house early next week, before fully taking charge.
LaserCard had initially said the program would be signed by the end of March, and had already began shipments of initial cards for the program.
"It's not a matter of if, just a matter of when," said Morgan Keegan analyst Brian Ruttenbur. Ruttenbur remained confident that large orders would come from Italy by the end of the calendar year. The decree had reached the desk of Italy's finance minister just before the recent elections, he said.
Morgan Keegan makes a market in LaserCard.
The company also announced Tuesday it had received a second purchase order of $1.3 million, under an approximately $11 million subcontract, for an optical-memory-based national identification card project for a Middle Eastern country.
