Lucent Reports Rising Profits

Lucent Technologies has reported results for the first quarter of fiscal 2004, which ended Dec. 31, 2003. Lucent reported a profit for the quarter, with net income of US$338 million, compared with a net loss of US$264 million in the year-ago quarter.

The company recorded revenues of US$2.26 billion in the quarter, an increase of 11% sequentially and 9% from the year-ago quarter. The company recorded revenues of US$2.03 billion in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2003 and US$2.08 billion in the year-ago quarter.

"We continued to generate positive momentum in the first quarter of fiscal 2004," said Lucent Technologies Chairman and CEO Patricia Russo. "We achieved our second consecutive quarter of profitability and grew our revenues with a significant increase in Mobility.

"We are clearly seeing evidence that the market is stabilizing," said Russo. "While we remain cautious, we are encouraged by the recent news we have seen from some of our customers. As market spending increases, we are well-positioned to grow our revenues by providing customers with integrated network solutions and a broad portfolio of services that will enable them to evolve to next-generation networks, while cutting the cost of their network operations. In fact, our announcement last week of US$350 million worth of agreements in China covered the entire range of our network offerings and is a good illustration of the value we bring to our customers.

Lucent Technologies Chief Financial Officer Frank D'Amelio comented "We still expect annual revenues to remain essentially flat or to increase slightly year over year. And while we may still see some quarterly ups and downs, given this quarter's results, we expect to report a profit for the year, excluding the impact from any revaluation of the warrants,"

Gross margin for the quarter was 41% of revenues as compared with 43% for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2003, a sequential decrease of 2% points. As the company stated last quarter, its gross margin was helped by 4% points in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2003 due to certain significant items that were not expected to recur this quarter. This quarter's gross margin includes the favorable impact of increased sales volume and continued cost reductions."

Posted to the site on 22nd January 2004