Motorola Inc kicked off the parade of June stock reports by seeing its shares rise $2.43 to close at $82.81 on whispers before its second quarter numbers were actually published. Earnings were $268m or $0.4 cents a share compared with $326m in the same period last year after a charge of $170m to cover the cost of existing the DRAM business which it announced last week. Without the charges earnings would have been $0.62, a few pennies ahead of analysts expectations of around $0.56 as surveyed by First Call. Revenue rose 1% to $7.5bn from $6.8bn a year ago. However at the half way mark revenue is up only 2.7% at $14.2bn compared with $13.8bn last time. Semiconductors, cellular systems and land mobile products were the big advances this time around. Cellular sales rose 6% to $2.8bn, semiconductors were up 3% at $2bn, land mobile sales were up 22% at $1.2bn, messaging information and media are up 6% at $1.1bn, auto, energy and components sector was up 6%, space and systems technology sales were up 94% and computer system sales increased 25%. Costs declined to 66.7% from 67.1% of sales from a year ago, though expenses rose from 16.5% to 19.7% and margins declined a point. Wall Street’s hoping these kinds of reports will be the bell- weather for technology stocks, most of which rose on the day, driving the Dow Jones industrial average up by 103 point to 7,962.
