Business is so bad out there that NCR Corp has had to scale back the forecasts it made to AT&T Co once it started negotiating a merger agreement: it had said that it would do $386m net on sales of $6,620m for 1991, but now says that because of slumping markets in Europe and weakening orders in the Pacific region, the outturn will be materially below those forecasts; the announcement puts a question mark over NCR’s forecasts for the medium term – it had been going for $545m net on sales of $7,300m in 1992, $897m on $10,300m in 1995, and $1,560m on $16,840m in the year 2000, although forecasting that far ahead in the computer industry is a real mug’s game; the company did $369m net on sales of $6,290m last year, and now does not expect to achieve as good a result this year.
