OCZ Technology Earnings Preview

OCZ Technology (Nasdaq: OCZ), the maker of solid state drives, reports fiscal third-quarter earnings today after the market closes. Analysts are expecting a profit of 6 cents a share on revenue of $99.5 million. EPS estimates are as high as 9 cents while revenue estimates range from $88 million to $105 million. Earlier today, California-based OCZ announced it acquired SANRAD Inc., a privately held provider of flash caching and virtualization software and hardware for $15 million in stock."This transaction is an important step in OCZ's enterprise solid state drive strategy," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology Group, in a statement. "It significantly enhances the ability for customers to increase datacenter performance and efficiency by putting more virtual machines (VM) on a server without slowing down the VM's ability to access stored data, thus substantially lowering the overall cost of deployment."Shares of OCZ have surged almost 38% in the past three months, easily outpacing embattled rival Stec (Nasdaq: STEC). What to watch for: How OCZ is stacking up against rivals Stec an Fuion-IO (NYSE: FIO). Any updates on fiscal 2012 guidance, demand and supply chain issues as well as plans for the new acquisition. OCZ previously forecast fiscal 2012 revenue of $320 million to $350 million.