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To: tuck who wrote (4121)	6/12/2002 12:35:22 PM
From: tuck	Respond to of 4849

FWIW . . . >.NEW YORK (Reuters) - Motorola Inc., the No. 2 maker of wireless telephones, on Wednesday said it will meet or beat its guidance for the second quarter and remains on track to return to profitability in the third quarter and show a profit for the full year. Motorola President and Chief Operating Officer Edward Breen told investors at a Bear Stearns conference here that growth is returning to the company's businesses and it expects to meet or beat its April guidance for the second quarter of a loss of 4 cents a share on revenues of at least $6.4 billion. "We are confident that (second-quarter) sales will meet or slightly exceed our guidance," Breen said. "We are confident that our operating results, excluding the impact of special items, will meet or be slightly favorable to our prior guidance of a loss of 4 cents per share." Motorola's shares rose 52 cents, or 3.6 percent, to $14.95 in heavy trading on the New York Stock Exchange shortly before midday. Motorola's optimism was in contrast to rival Nokia, the world's largest maker of cell phones. Nokia on Tuesday warned second-quarter sales would fall 2 percent to 6 percent from a prior target of up to 7 percent growth. It also said sales in its key mobile phone unit would grow by only zero to 4 percent, less than half the 10 percent growth it had signaled as recently as April. J.P. Morgan analyst Edward Snyder said Motorola's cell phone and semiconductor units must be performing better than expected. "It further indicates that Motorola is probably stronger than people expect in (cell) phones," he said. "It indicates that maybe Motorola is fitter than Nokia let on. "More importantly also the cost cuts that Motorola is undertaking are starting to bear fruit too," Snyder added. Breen added that Motorola, which also makes wireless telecom gear, semiconductors and set-top boxes for cable television, remains on track to return to profitability in the third quarter and show a profit of at least 4 cents a share for the full year. He said the company still expects full-year sales to fall 5 percent to 10 percent from last year's $29.5 billion. "Growth is returning in our businesses," Breen said. "The first quarter was a key indicator of that." In April Motorola reported a first-quarter loss of 8 cents a share, which was smaller than the 12-cent-a-share loss analysts had expected at the time. After Motorola reported its first-quarter results, it said it expected a second-quarter loss of 4 cents a share, excluding one-time items, on revenues of $6.3 billion to $6.4 billion. Before it gave that outlook, analysts had expected that same loss on sales of $6.58 billion, according to First Call. Finland's Nokia, which makes more than one in three cell phones sold worldwide, added, however, that its share of the global cell phone market would rise to 38 percent in the second quarter from 34.7 percent in the first quarter, and it remained on track to hit its second-quarter profit targets. Nokia's biggest surprise was a big cut to its second-quarter sales outlook for its struggling wireless equipment unit. It said it expected that unit's sales to fall 20 percent to 25 percent from a year ago, down from a previous expected drop of 5 percent to 10 percent. Breen also said Wednesday that Motorola remains on track to cut its work force to 100,000 by the end of the year from 106,000 at the end of March. At its peak in August 2000, Motorola employed about 150,000 people.<< snip Cheers, T