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To: MulhollandDrive who wrote (10303)	7/23/2002 11:39:46 AM
From: MulhollandDrive	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17639

quote.bloomberg.com /23 11:29 Lucent's 3rd-Qtr Loss Widens; Will Cut 7,000 Jobs (Update3) By Justin Baer Murray Hill, New Jersey, July 23 (Bloomberg) -- Lucent Technologies Inc., the biggest U.S. maker of telephone equipment, said its third-quarter loss widened to $7.86 billion as sales tumbled. The company plans 7,000 more job cuts by December. The net loss, Lucent's ninth straight, deepened to $2.31 a share, from $3.24 billion, or 95 cents, in the year-ago quarter. Sales in the period ended June 30 plunged 50 percent to $2.95 billion. Lucent shares fell as much as 22 percent. Sales slid for a fifth straight quarter after U.S. local- phone companies, upon which Lucent pinned its hopes for a turnaround, further curbed spending, Chief Executive Patricia Russo said in an interview. BellSouth Corp. and SBC Communications Inc. pared equipment budgets this week after posting quarterly sales declines and cutting profit forecasts. ``The bottom line is they need to start seeing some spending from these carriers,'' said Ryan Tansey, an analyst with the $500 million John Hancock Technology Fund, owner of about 500,000 Lucent shares. ``The problem with stocks (like Lucent) is that no one can see that yet.'' Shares of Lucent fell 43 cents to $1.67 in late-morning trading after dropping as low as $1.64. The stock, which traded as high as $64.69 in December 1999, had slid 66 percent in the past year. Some of the Murray Hill, New Jersey-based company's customers, including Global Crossing Ltd., have filed for bankruptcy. AT&T Corp., a Lucent customer and its former parent, today posted a $12.7 billion loss, the company's biggest in at least 22 years, after sales fell 8.8 percent. ``The level of spending pullback has intensified,'' Russo said on a conference call with analysts and investors. Lucent didn't provide a fiscal fourth-quarter forecast. Jobs Cuts With no pickup in demand predicted, Lucent said it will shave its workforce to about 45,000 from 123,000 in December 2000. Lucent's previously announced firings were designed to bring the company's workforce down to 52,000 by September, spokeswoman Mary Lou Ambrus said. The latest round of job cuts will pare annual expenses by $700 million and enable Lucent to break even in late fiscal 2003 with quarterly sales of $3.5 billion, the company said. Additional measures taken this quarter would lower that threshold, Lucent said. Excluding writedowns to reduce taxes and account for the declining value of some assets, as well as job-related expenses, Lucent would have had a loss of 16 cents a share in the recent quarter. On that basis, Lucent was forecast to have a loss of 14 cents on sales of $3.05 billion, according the average estimates of analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call. Lucent's sales in the year-ago third quarter totaled $5.89 billion.