After Digital River Inc. declared that its top customer Symantec will not expand a present contract to manage its online traffic, its shares plummeted 40 percent. 

The e-commerce services provider had to bear with the pain of further plunge in its shares, which earlier fell 32 percent in pre-market trade. This happened after the company confirmed that it may not provide an outlook for 2010 when it reports its quarterly results on 3rd November.

Symantec has in its mind to shift all the online traffic to an internally developed e-commerce system before the current contract expires on June 30, 2010. Presently, it is outsourced to Digital River. 

JMP Securities analyst Sameet Sinha, was pretty surprised at the decision taken by Symantec to take the operations in-house. 

"In 2008, sales of products to Symantec accounted for about 24 percent of Digital River's revenue, while sales from proprietary Digital River services to Symantec consumers accounted for 9 percent of revenue," said Digital River. 

Nearly 32 percent was contributed by Symantec to both revenue and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. 

Digital River thinks that third-quarter results would be at or little above the top end of its outlook.

The company, in the month of July, predicted third-quarter earnings of 38 cents to 41 cents a share, excluding items, on revenue of $96.5 million to $98.5 million. 

On Monday morning, shares of Digital River sank $16.04 to $24.38, making them the top percentage loser on Nasdaq.