VDSL chip vendor Metalink announced today that it is revising its first-quarter revenue estimates down and appointing two new executives.

While the company declined to provide an estimate range, it previously estimated its full-year revenue for 2005 would be around $30 million. At the time, the company believed that to be a potentially conservative forecast given its penetration of the Japanese market.

In a prepared statement today, though, Tzvika Shukhman, Metalink's chairman and CEO, said a few Asian orders the company was expecting to land in this quarter have been pushed back.

"While we are obviously disappointed with this quarter's revenues, we are optimistic with respect to our revenue growth beyond this quarter,” he said in the statement. “Our optimism is primarily based on the progress we are making in Japan where the market is clearly moving toward symmetric 100 Mb/s VDSL deployment.”

In a separate announcement, the company said it has promoted Yuval Ruhama to vice president of finance and Yaniv Dinur as vice president of international sales. Ruhama replaces Ofer Lavie, while Dinur replaces Ronen Avron. Lavie and Avron both will be leaving the company.

Ruhama joined Metalink in June 2000 as its legal and equity director and company secretary. Dinur previously was vice president of worldwide sales & business development at Emblaze, and vice president of sales at Comverse Technology's Mobile Internet division.