Despite posting its sixth consecutive quarter of increased orders, NCR Corp has failed to make a profit and the share price, which has dropped to a lowly $28.5, was unmoved by the news. Second-quarter net loss came in at $4m, down from losses last time of $18m on sales also down 2.0% at $1.65bn. NCR has produced a miserable string of results recently, only managing to scrape into profit once in the last eight quarters, and then by the tiny margin of $7,000. But chairman and chief executive Lars Nyberg insisted on remaining upbeat, saying in a prepared statement that he was pleased with the progress NCR had made in the period and that he was optimistic about achieving growth in revenues by the end of the year. The company clung to the better statistics where it could, insisting that, on a local currency basis, revenues had in fact improved by 1% rather than the reported drop of 2% in the headline figures. The company also chose its phrases carefully, using terms like low single-digit growth. In other words, rounded up to 1%. But the balance sheet remains strong with negligible long-term debts and a healthy $1.16bn of cash available. Gross margins for its products and systems improved from 29.2% in the second quarter to 29.6% but, on the service side, they declined by 2.6% points because of lower reported revenues against a cost structure developed to support higher revenue levels. The only part of the world where it is making progress is the Asia/Pacific region and revenues fell in North America, Europe and Africa.
