The Toronto, Canada-based company turned a $63m loss into income of $27m on revenue 7.6% lower at $2.7bn. The company said that if the sale of its UMTS access business was excluded, revenue would have been down 4%.
It said sales were also hit by some difficulty in fulfilling certain customer orders which resulted in the deferral of $45m in revenue as a result of what the company described as a transition of a CDMA manufacturing center.
Nortel said fourth-quarter revenue is likely to be flat, and for the full year is likely to be down slightly.
Nortel CEO Mike Zafirovski said it had achieved solid results in a challenging business environment. He said the operating margin was 5%, the highest since 2004.
In common with its competitors, Nortel’s problem has been in carrier networks, where sales were down 19% at $1bn. However, its growth engine is in the enterprise markets where sales climbed 18% to $671m.
Its global services revenue was flat at $540m, though if the UMTS Access divestiture is excluded, revenue showed a 6% increase, while revenue in metro Ethernet networks fell 13% to $360m.
With Zafirovski promising modest growth for 2008 and restructuring complete, the stock market is expecting a steady improvement in the figures from a once-troubled company.
