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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: StanX Long who wrote (59776)	1/31/2002 4:46:13 AM
From: StanX Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Alcatel sees weak sales January 31, 2002 Posted: 0822 GMT cnn.com By Catherine Bremer PARIS, (Reuters) - Telecoms equipment giant Alcatel plunged into the red in 2001 for the second time in its history with a 4.96 billion euro net loss, and signalled the current industry downturn would bite for several months to come. Alcatel, ranked fifth globally among its peers, reported a 20 percent year-on-year slide in fourth quarter sales to 6.77 billion euros, dragging it down to a 368 million euro operating loss versus an 832 million profit a year earlier. The net loss was in line with a profit warning by Alcatel in October. Fourth quarter sales were above market expectations -- marking a 20 percent increase on the third quarter -- but the operating loss was steeper than analysts had forecast. Alcatel shares opened 5.8 percent higher at 18.20 euros after the company announced substantially lower debt and forecast a pick-up in sales from the second quarter. Alcatel's miserable bottom line -- its worst since it dropped a bombshell in 1995 with an unexpected annual loss -- echoes those of rivals like Swedish Ericsson, Canada's Nortel Networks and U.S. Lucent. Equipment makers have borne the brunt of a cash crisis among telecoms operators, whose rash spending on external growth and new technology in recent years has left them with huge debt and little money to spend on new infrastructure. Alcatel, which announced some 33,000 job cuts last year to try to soften the blow from sliding demand for telecoms infrastructure, said it expected first-quarter sales to decline around 30 percent from the fourth quarter. However, it predicted that sales would start rising quarter-on-quarter from the second quarter and that it would show a full-year operating profit in 2002. “We expect 2002 to remain challenging. The first quarter will be weak with market softness compounding the usual seasonal effect. Compared to the fourth quarter of 2001, which was up 20 percent sequentially, we expect Q1 2002 sales to decline by around 30 percent,” CEO Serge Tchuruk said in a statement. “Income