Second slot machine glitch reported

Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2001 | 9:58 a.m.

WMS Industries Inc. said Monday it has reported "software issues" in its slot machine line to Nevada and Mississippi gaming regulators. This marks the second time in less than a year that WMS has reported software difficulties with its products.

WMS confirmed the problem after Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown cited it in a research report lowering WMS from "buy" to "market perform."

Earlier this year, WMS began fixing thousands of slot machines after a software bug was discovered that allowed bill validators on certain machines to be manipulated. Sixteen thousand slots have been fixed in Nevada and Mississippi, the company said.

Now, the fixed machines are locking up at an increased rate, WMS said -- and in a "very few reported instances," the machines display unearned credits when restarted.

"Since WMS technicians or casino slot personnel are always present at the time the devices are restarted, WMS believes it has identified the extremely small number of occurrences of this issue," the company said in a statement. WMS said it will provide a software fix for the new problem once it receives regulatory approvals.

WMS' efforts to fix the first software problem forced the company to divert resources from its sales efforts, and have hurt the company's earnings in the past two quarters.

Despite the news, WMS stock rose today 23 cents to $20.23 in morning trading.