It announced third-quarter figures showing net income 4.5% higher on sales that rose 4.5% to $6.83 billion. Sales topped the company’s guidance in July of $6.3 billion to $6.5 billion and net earnings per share of $0.05 were above its forecast of break-even to $0.02.
Most encouraging for the troubled company is that orders are 25% up on the same period last year. All six segments had higher sales and five had higher earnings, before exceptional items. Motorola said that it had the strongest balance sheet for 20 years and cash and equivalents now total more than $7 billion.
It expects fourth-quarter revenue of between $7.5 and $7.8 billion, 4% up on last year’s figure, and earnings before special items in the range of $0.11 to $0.15.
Semiconductors remains the major problem area, and after announcing earlier this month plans to create a separate company to tackle that area, Motorola has its work cut out to make it attractive to investors. Sales fell 4% to $1.2 billion while orders rose 8% to $1.4 billion as it faced continued problems due to low capital expenditure in telecoms and competition in the wireless handset market.
Lower sales left the chip operation with an operating loss of $76 million for the quarter compared with earnings of $12 million for the same period last year.
Sales at the personal communications segment rose 8% to $2.9 billion, and orders rose 44% to $3.7 billion. However, margins have been cruelly squeezed by competition in Asia, and operating profit was 39% down on last year at $147 million. It said handset unit shipments were 19% higher at 20.2 million.
This article was based on material originally published by ComputerWire.
