UPDATE 1-CDI Corp Q2 profit misses Street view

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July 31 (Reuters) - CDI Corp (CDI.N), a professional staffing and outsourcing company, posted a quarterly profit that missed market estimates, hurt by a slowdown in permanent placements, and said third-quarter revenue could be flat to slightly down from a year ago.

For the second quarter, net income was $7 million, or 34 cents a share, compared with $8.3 million, or 41 cents a share, in the year-ago period.

The latest quarter results included a pre-tax charge of about $0.3 million in real estate exit costs in the engineering solutions segment, the company said.

Revenue fell 2.2 percent to $289.2 million. Sales at the IT solutions unit fell by 6.6 percent, reflecting decreased contract staffing in the automotive sector, the company said.

Analysts on average expected earnings of 42 cents a share, before special items, on revenue of $303.2 million, according to Reuters Estimates.

CDI also forecast relatively flat revenue for the full year. Analysts were expecting $1.21 billion. In 2007, CDI reported revenue of $1.19 billion.

For the third quarter, analysts expect the company to post revenue of $309.9 million. In the year-ago quarter, CDI recorded revenue of $298.7 million.

CDI expects pre-tax profit from continuing operations to be down slightly in the third quarter, and relatively flat for the full year, compared with the year ago, Chief Executive Roger Ballou said in a statement. Shares of the Philadelphia-based company closed at $28.36 Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange. (Reporting by Bhaswati Mukhopadhyay in Bangalore; Editing by Himani Sarkar)