Making Moves - That's the Fiber !
Nortel Profits Again on Improved Sales
By Jeffry Bartash, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 4:36 PM ET Jan. 29, 2004
WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) -- Nortel Networks on Thursday posted its second straight quarterly profit and its third in four quarters as sales rose almost 12 percent to top estimates.
In the latest quarter, the company reported net income of $499 million, or 11 cents a share, reversing a loss of $168 million, or 4 cents, a year earlier.
Revenue climbed 12 percent to $2.83 billion from $2.53 billion in the year-ago quarter. In the prior quarter, sales totaled $2.27 billion.
Excluding onetime items, Nortel earned $390 million, or 9 cents a share, from continuing operations. Nortel was projected to earn 2 cents on sales of $2.45 billion, according to the consensus of analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call.
The fourth quarter included a onetime gain of $109 million related to discontinued operations.
Looking ahead, Nortel Chief Executive Frank Dunn said he expects the company "to grow faster than the market" in 2004. Yet sales are likely to experience a 'seasonal decline" in the current first quarter compared to the last three months of 2003, Nortel said.
On Thursday, shares of Nortel (NT: news, chart, profile) rose 12 cents to $6.58.
Making moves
In recent months, Nortel appears to have begun its recovery from a three-year slump that besieged the networking industry. To get back in the black, Nortel has cut thousands of jobs, closed operations and marked down the worth of assets whose value had diminished.
Earlier this month, the company won an exclusive contract to supply technology to help Verizon Communications upgrade its network so phone calls can be sent over the Internet. Internet telephony has become a hot trend as corporations seek ways to reduce their communications costs.
And last week, Nortel said it might sell its manufacturing
ssets to further cut costs and free up more money to develop new products. The maker of gear for telecommunications networks said it has entered talks to sell its operations to Flextronics, the large contract supplier, for more than $500 million in cash.
The company said it ended the quarter with $4 billion in cash, up from $3.6 billion in the third quarter. |
