Alcatel-Lucent Posts Loss, but Revenue Climbs 18%
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Alcatel-Lucent finished its first full year as a merged company with a net loss of 3.52 billion euros and sales of 17.79 billion euros, a 2.5 percent drop.
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(InfoWorld) - Alcatel SA and Lucent Technologies Inc.'s plan to form a global communications equipment giant may run into a roadblock next week in a state court in New Jersey. The companies face a showdown Sept. 6 with shareholders who want to postpone Lucent's Sept. 7 shareholder meeting on the merger as they pursue lawsuits to block it. The Superior Court of New Jersey in Union County is set to hear arguments that day on whether to grant an injunction sought in a proposed class-action suit, Resnick vs. Lucent Technologies Inc. On Thursday, the plaintiffs in another suit, filed in New York, agreed to join in on that hearing. Alcatel and Lucent announced in April that they had agreed to merge into a single company, based in Paris, that would have about US$25 billion in annual revenue. Lucent has struggled in the wake of the post-2000 telecom crash, and the deal is also seen as an outgrowth of consolidation among the carriers that buy from big equipment companies such as Alcatel and Lucent. But the merger, now heading for votes by shareholders in both companies, has been criticized and still faces some hurdles. The stocks of both companies have fallen since the deal was announced, and some investment firms have spoken out against the merger. The European Commission and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission have both approved the deal, but it still needs approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. Both companies have scheduled shareholder meetings on Sept. 7 to vote on the deal. In May, the Asa R. Maley Trust sued Lucent and several of its executives in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging they made a deal that would benefit executives and hurt shareholders. The plaintiffs sought class-action status. "In essence, the proposed Acquisition is the product of a hopelessly flawed process that was designed to ensure the sale of Lucent to one buyer, on terms preferential to Alcatel and to subvert the interests of plaintiff and the other public stockholders of Lucent," the plaintiffs said in their complaint. On Thursday, the attorneys in the Maley case agreed to serve as co-counsel for the plaintiffs in the similar Resnick case and will submit their papers for the Sept. 6 hearing in New Jersey. Lucent is based in Murray Hill, New Jersey. In a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Tuesday, Lucent said the Resnick suit was without merit and it has substantial defenses to the claims. In a response to the Maley case earlier this month, the company told the New York court that the Maley case should be dismissed.
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Alcatel-Lucent warned Thursday that after talks with North American mobile operator clients about their spending plans, third quarter sales growth was expected to be weak and would &quot;negatively impact&quot; profitability.
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OCTOBER 14, 2004 (REUTERS) - SAN FRANCISCO -- Sun Microsystems Inc. today posted a narrower quarterly loss as revenue rose year over year for the second consecutive quarter after three years of declines, sending shares slightly higher.
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Telecommunications gear maker Lucent Technologies Inc. may receive an &#36;816 million federal income tax refund related to its multibillion dollar losses at the height of the telecom industry slump.
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Alcatel-Lucent  on Friday said it would cut some 12,500 jobs over three years as it reported a dip into net loss for the fourth quarter and forecast a drop in first-quarter revenues.
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Newly-merged telecoms firm Alcatel-Lucent is to cut 12,500 jobs in three years as profits are halved.
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The job cuts are in addition to 12,500 cuts announced in February. Together, they amount to 20 percent of the work force of Alcatel and Lucent when they combined.
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Network computer maker Sun Microsystems Inc.  on Thursday posted a narrower quarterly loss as revenue rose year over year for the second consecutive quarter after three years of declines, sending shares slightly higher.
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(InfoWorld) - Alcatel-Lucent cut its revenue forecast for the year on Thursday, underscoring the challenges the newly merged company faces in a highly competitive communications equipment industry. The company now expects its revenue to be flat or up slightly in 2007, compared with an earlier forecast that it would grow in the mid-single digits along with the overall carrier market. (Both estimates use a constant exchange rate between the euro and U.S. dollar.) In its new forecast, Alcatel-Lucent cited discussions with wireless customers in North America that led it to anticipate weaker spending than it had expected among them this year. Growth in sales volume won't make up for falling prices, Alcatel-Lucent said. As a result, the company expects only to break even in the current quarter. In the second quarter, which ended June 30, it reported an adjusted net loss of â¬336 million, or $455 million as of June 30, the last day in the period being reported. France'sÂ Alcatel bought troubled U.S. infrastructure vendor Lucent last yearÂ as the companies faced Asian competitors, such as Huawei Technologies, as well as consolidation among telecommunications carriers and vendors. It cut 3,800 jobs in the first half of the year and still expects to reach a target of â¬600 million in pre-tax savings from the merger this year, butÂ the merger hasn't led to strong results. The market has lashed out: Alcatel-Lucent's shares (ALA) on the New York Stock Exchange started this year over $15 and are now below $10. On Thursday's news, the stock fell $0.88 to close at $9.16. The company is taking steps to speed up its post-merger restructuring and carry out additional focused cost-cutting plans, CEO Patricia Russo said in a prepared statement on Thursday. Alcatel-Lucent does expect some improvement from quarter to quarter. It forecast third-quarter revenue up slightly from the second quarter and a strong increase in the last quarter of the year. Bright spots in its worldwide business include the wireline and enterprise network business, as well as sales in the Asia-Pacific region.
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Costly woes continue Alcatel-Lucent has admitted its outlook is dire after it disclosed it would be writing down $4.3bn of assets.â¦
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The carrier said it was hampered by high fuel prices in the fourth quarter but was able to post a narrower loss, $70 million compared to a loss of $1.98 billion a year earlier,  on a solid increase in sales.
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JDS Uniphase Corp., a maker of fiber-optic equipment, on Wednesday posted a deeper loss for the first quarter despite sharply higher revenue.
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(InfoWorld) - Concerns about a spending slowdown continue to make IT investors nervous. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index closed Thursday at 2601.06, down from the 2700 level two months ago. The faltering U.S. housing sector, widespread mortgage payment failures, and related worries about the credit market have depressed share prices since the middle of the third quarter. IT companies, although not hit as hard as businesses in other sectors, have not been immune to the turmoil. A tightening of credit is often expected to dampen business and consumer spending. SoÂ Alcatel-Lucent's Thursday warning about the quarterÂ and the rest of the year struck a nerve, several weeks in advance of quarterly results. The company said it expects to break even on an operating basis in the quarter, and cut its 2007 revenue forecast. It said revenue for the year would be flat or slightly up, at constant exchange rates. Previously, it said that revenue would be up about 5 percent for the year. It was the third time this year the company cut its projections. Its share price dropped $0.88 to close at $9.16 Thursday. Alcatel-Lucent's announcement hinted at what many market observers have been fearing: slowing purchases by North American customers. "Alcatel-Lucent is now seeing a change in capital spending with those (North American) customers in 2007, compared to what it had anticipated," the company said. The company said it still expects ongoing cost savings in the wake of the merger of Alcatel and Lucent, but that did not quiet concerns about the overall market. "Merging may have made sense, but it does not change the marketplace. Demand is demand and that does not change because of mergers," said telecom analyst Jeff Kagan in an e-mail report. A slowdown in demand would make competition in the tough telecom market even more fierce. Earlier this week Alcatel-Lucent rival LM Ericsson said it was gaining market share in Europe and Asia. Ericsson shares rose $0.36 Thursday to close at $36.59. Ericsson's claims notwithstanding, U.S. and European vendors are getting hit with increasing competition from Chinese vendors such as Huawei Technologies and ZTE, which are steadily expanding their product portfolios. Not all tech-sector news this week was grim, however. The notebook market continues to experience explosive growth, according to a report released earlier this week by market research company DisplaySearch. The nine biggest notebook companies saw double-digit growth during the second quarter, while the market, measured by units shipped, grew by more than 24 percent, DisplaySearch said. Although those figures were generated before the third-quarter turmoil, the firm raised its estimate from 97.5 million notebooks shipping in 2007 to 103 million. The true impact of economic turmoil on IT will not be clear until the end of the year. For now, IT investors will try to read the tea leaves, in the form of quarterly results that will start to trickle in next over the next few weeks. Â
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PARIS, June 22  /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced it has been selected by Vodafone Portugal for the implementation of a triple play-capable network solution to provide DSL- based services.
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Telecoms equipment provider Alcatel-Lucent  could cut up to 20 percent of staff, French weekly l'Expansion reported on Tuesday.
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Telecommunications equipment maker Lucent Technologies Inc., whose multibillion dollar losses forced it to shed 80 percent of its work force, has recorded its first profitable year since 2000.