Motorola announces third consecutive loss

Chips are down

By Kieren McCarthy, 10th October 2001

Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup/Recovery

Motorola has reported its third quarterly loss in a row, although it provided no surprises to the City and share price has remained unchanged.

The telecoms and processor manufacturer announced a loss of $153 million (£105 million) for its third quarter from a profit of $643 million (£442 million) a year ago. Revenue was down 22 per cent to £5.1 billion.

Motorola did say however that its mobile handset business has popped back into the black and things looked better for the future. This was ruined however by a huge £244 million loss (compared with £139 million profit this time last year) for its semiconductor arm.

The broadband division's profit dropped $40 million to $120 million. And the telecoms solutions arm saw profit slump from $247 million to $33 million. There was also a $2 billion net charge for "investment impairments, cost-reduction activities and approximately $1.3 billion in additional reserves that relate to a defaulted $2 billion financing to Telsim, a cellular operator in Turkey".

Motorola president and COO Robert L. Growney said: "In total, Motorola made important progress in sequentially reducing its pro forma operating loss, although we won't be satisfied until we return to solid and growing profitability throughout our portfolio of businesses. We will continue to be focused on efforts to control operating expenses and to maintain the health of our balance sheet during this period of uncertainty."

Motorola won a $30 million deal to upgrade Horizon phone network in the US to 3G on Monday. ®