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Technology Stocks : Motorola (MOT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: slacker711 who wrote (3128)	4/24/2008 8:58:53 AM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3436

Motorola Q1 • Webcast: phx.corporate-ir.net • Q1 2008 Earnings Press Release and Financial Tables: tinyurl.com >> Motorola Posts Wider Loss Handset Sales Plunge Again; Second Quarter Seen Weak Jeffry Bartash MarketWatch April 24, 2008 tinyurl.com Motorola Inc. on Thursday posted a wider first-quarter loss after selling fewer wireless phones than expected and incurring costs for layoffs. The company also predicted an even weaker second quarter than Wall Street was forecasting. Motorola recently said it would separate its money-losing handset division, a move pushed by wealthy investor Carl Icahn, who owns 6.4% of the company's stock. Icahn had been pressuring Motorola for months to adopt that strategy. Schaumburg, Ill.-based Motorola has sustained deep losses in market share since early 2007 and fallen behind market leaders Nokia Corp and Samsung. Motorola failed to find a successor for its blockbuster Razr series and its current roster of handsets is viewed as lackluster. The vendor has especially struggled to make a dent in Europe. Analysts say it could take at least until 2009 for Motorola to show any progress. New phones take several years to develop, a problem exacerbated by lack of strong leadership and the ongoing turmoil. What's more, some of the company's top talent has left and the pending breakup has weakened already-low morale. Some analysts question whether the handset unit can survive on its own. In the first three months of 2008, Motorola said its loss widened to $194 million, or 9 cents a share, from a year-earlier loss of $181 million, or 8 cents, a share. Sales dropped 21% to $7.45 billion from $9.43 billion. Excluding one-time costs, Motorola would have lost 5 cents a share. On that basis, analysts were expected the company to lose 7 cents a share on revenue of $7.84 billion, according to the financial-data provider FactSet. In the current second quarter, meanwhile, Motorola estimated it would lose 2 cents to 4 cents a share from operations, compared with Wall Street's consensus prediction that the company would break even. Motorola shipped 27.4 million wireless handsets, down from 40.9 million in the prior quarter and an all-time high of 65.7 million phones in the 2006 fourth quarter. Wall Street was expecting the company to ship as many as 31 million. The company's global share has fallen to around 10% from nearly 23% in late 2006. The handset division posted an operating loss of $418 million, compared with an operating loss of $233 million a year ago. Mobile sales fell 39% to $3.3 billion from the year-ago quarter. The mobile unit accounted for less than half of total sales, compared with as much as two-thirds of Motorola's revenue in good years. ### Samsung tonight to close out the major handset makers. - Eric -