Comments on: Q4: Big Loss, Big Writedowns, Lower Sales

By: Nortel management follows the path of AIG in rewarding incompetence (But wait it gets worse) « Nortel Insider - by Desk Jockey

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:27:08 +0000

[...] the outcome. Consider for example what would have happened if Ch.11 had not been declared: With the poor Q4 2008 results it’s likely no one would have received much of a bonus since bonuses are normally tied to [...]

By: Ex_Nortel

Ex_Nortel — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:15:59 +0000

The $2.7B in sales and the supposed 36 cents in profit before one time charges is pure vapor. The 50% QoQ growth in Carrier Netwroks was created with deferred revenues and 'sales' from the LG – Nortel JV. The real sales number was probably closer to $2.45B. The Q1 numbers will begin to tell the real tale.

The gain in cash balances was due to the sell off of short term instruments. In essence, simply moving chips from one bucket to another. Cash burn continues.

Chapter 11 has shielded Nortel from presenting clarity and transparency as to its numbers. Those areas that could not be made totally opaque, like Enterprise, showed a substantial drop in QoQ and YoY sales. This was the area that the firm was supposedly banking its future on – and had Mike Z's right hand man running the business.

By: Ex_Nortel

Ex_Nortel — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 19:15:59 +0000

The gain in cash balances was due to the sell off of short term instruments. In essence, simply moving chips from one bucket to another. Cash burn continues.

By: xxx_nortel

xxx_nortel — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 12:56:09 +0000

Wow, Nortel was actually PROFITABLE in Q4'08 ! Excluding non-cash items (goodwill, tax-writeoff), there was a $60M profit. Pretty good given the economic downturn. Exclude other one-time items and there was a quarterly profit of $0.36/share....not bad for a stock trading at $0.10. Cash balance increased from Q3 to Q4 by $100M. I'm surprised the Nortel press release didn't try to put a more positive spin on the results.

http://www2.nortel.com/go/news_detail.jsp?cat_i...

Of course, with orders down, bankrupcty in play, I expect Q1'09 will be quite dire.

By: Waterloonatic

Waterloonatic — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 02:24:40 +0000

What is happening with the Enterprise business these days? Do you think any existing customers are planning to upgrade their CS 1000 software release when the next version is released?

By: scalpcutter

scalpcutter — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 01:00:15 +0000

Slattery isn't the reason.
The only reason the market share went up is for a few simple reasons.
It is a recession and cisco has more cash to burn than the competitors because
they have lots of money. They can undercut competitors just to get more market share. Don't give slattery credit. He did nothing.

By: broadbandbill

broadbandbill — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:56:27 +0000

It was strong and growing because of Riedel, who did the same thing at Juniper but it wasn't hackney that killed it; it was Z's decision to put Hackney in charge! So much for having P&L responsibilities…–bb

By: hangingin

hangingin — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:32:57 +0000

Former Enterprise VP Slattery went to Cisco to run their Enterprise Voice business and it has grown from 25% market share to 32% since he joined.

By: Desk Jockey

Desk Jockey — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:00:45 +0000

As many have pointed out the big story here is the near complete turnaround of Enterprise in the one year that Hackney has had to destroy it!

Enterprise was one of the strongest and was growing. Hackney made sure to put an end to that! Another example of their anti-Midas touch: Everything they come into contact with turns to sh*t!

By: scalpcutter

scalpcutter — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 23:51:31 +0000

deferred revenue means payment received for work that has not yet been performed. How come one thinks of india or china when thinking about this????????????????????????