Motorola’s Q4 CLUNKR
Investors already know Motorola (MOT) has a grim future aheard of it. This morning they found out just how grim it’s to be.
The company today posted a $3.6 billion loss in the fourth quarter, suspended its dividend and projected further losses in the first three months of 2009. Motorola now sees a first-quarter loss of 10 cents to 12 cents a share. Analysts polled by Thomson were forecasting a six-cent loss.
Worse, phone shipments in the company’s cellphone division - crucial to its turnaround plans - fell by half last quarter. Motorola shipped about 19.2 million handsets in the fourth quarter, compared with about 41 million in the year-ago period. Clearly, the touch-screen Krave has done little to revive the company’s flagging post-Razr cellphone business. “It’s an indication of how much financial stress this company is under right now, and there’s more to come,” said JMP Securities LLC analyst Samuel Wilson. “Their handsets right now are stagnant, and there’s no sign of a new product cycle coming until maybe the end of the year.”
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