J.M. Dutton & Associates Announces Investment Opinion: Maintaining Riviera Tool Rating at Speculative Buy Rating by Dutton & Associates

EL DORADO HILLS, Calif.--Aug. 5, 2004--J.M. Dutton & Associates updates its coverage of Riviera Tool Company (AMEX:RTC), maintaining a Speculative Buy rating with a lower $3.30 price target. The 9-page update report by J.M. Dutton senior analyst Paul Resnik, CFA, is available at www.jmdutton.com as well as from First Call, Bloomberg, Zacks, Reuters and other leading financial portals.

Riviera reported sales of $7.60 million for Q3 ended May, down 23.4% from the year-earlier period's $9.92 million. The Company ascribed the lower sales to "being in the final stages of two major contracts along with delayed releases in significant new tooling programs." For the nine months, sales were up 7.3% to $24.20 million from $22.56 million. Current revenues continue to depend heavily on the tooling programs for the Mercedes-Benz M Class sports utility vehicle and a new crossover vehicle, both of which were secured and began to add to revenues in the latter part of fiscal 2003. Our downwardly revised estimate (see Financial Projections section of report) for full 2004 fiscal year sales of $31.0 million (versus our prior estimate was $34.2 million) is 10% below the 2003 level. The Company's backlog of awarded contracts stood at $7.6 million as of the end of May vs. $16.6 million at the end of the previous quarter and $21.7 million at the end of May 20, 200403. We are reducing our revenues and EPS estimates for the August 2004 fiscal year from EPS of $0.33 to $0.23 and for fiscal 2005 from $0.47 to $0.33. We once again underscore that we believe these shares will respond to any announcements of new program management endeavors as well as earnings progress.

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