Motorola turns profit in fourth quarter, but outlook weak

Motorola is making progress on its turnaround, but the company's fourth quarter revenue total and first quarter outlook illustrated there's a lot more work to do.

Motorola reported fourth quarter earnings of $142 million, or 6 cents a share. That tally includes 3 cents of charges. Revenue was $5.7 billion in the quarter. Wall Street was expecting fourth quarter earnings of 8 cents a share on revenue of $5.94 billion.

In other words, Motorola's earnings were solid, but revenue fell short (statement). And the outlook wasn't so hot either. For the first quarter, Motorola projected a loss of a penny a share to 3 cents a share. Wall Street was expecting a profit of 3 cents a share.

For the year, Motorola delivered a loss from continuing operations of $51 million, or 5 cents a share, on revenue of $22 billion, down from $30.1 billion a year ago.

By the numbers:

• Motorola's mobile device unit, which is headlined by the Droid smartphone, had sales of $1.8 billion and an operating loss of $132 million. The division did ship 12 million handsets, including 2 million smartphones.
• The home and networks mobility unit had fourth quarter operating earnings of $91 million on sales of $2 billion.
• Enterprise mobility had operating earnings of $368 million on sales of $2 billion.

In a statement, Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha said the company's first Android smartphone devices "have been very well received." The plan: Jha said that the company will launch at least 20 smartphone devices globally and develop its MotoBlur service. On a conference call, Jha said that device shipments would be below fourth quarter levels in the first quarter.