The Blue Bell, Pennsylvania-based company announced revenue down 7% at $1.52 billion, and a net loss of $34.9 million compared with a net profit of $111.5 million in the year-ago quarter. The results were at the low end of guidance given when it announced a profit warning recently.
Unisys said it is having problems with some of its large contracts. It said it had been expecting to record revenue in the fourth quarter from the sale of hardware and operating systems to a client as part of a broader contract signed in December, but decided that the appropriate accounting would be to recognize revenue on a month-to-month basis over the five-year term of the contract.
It also took an impairment charge of approximately $126 million to write off contract-related capitalized assets associated with what it called a challenging outsourcing contract.
President and CEO, Joseph McGrath, said Unisys expects continued impact from the challenging outsourcing contracts as well as continued weak sales of large enterprise servers. It expects revenue to decline by a low single-digit figure in the first quarter of 2005, and does not expect to make a profit.
