Motorola Revs Fall Short, Phones Weak

Motorola (MOT) this morning gave a fine demonstration of how deep its trouble run (see transcript).

For the first quarter, the company reported sales of $7.45 billion, coming up $300 million short of the Street consensus of $7.75 billion. The company lost 9 cents a share in the quarter; take out 4 cents from “highlighted items” and you get a loss of five cents, which is actually not quite as bad as the loss of 7 cents the Street had expected.

The real trouble was in the mobile devices business, where sales of $3.3 billion were down 39% year over year, and the company suffered an operating loss of $418 million, versus a loss of $233 million a year ago. Motorola shipped 27.4 million handsets in the quarter. The company, of course, has announced plans to separate the phones business from the rest of Motorola.

For Q2, the company sees a loss from continuing operations of 2-4 cents a share, a bit worse than the Street estimate of a loss of a penny a share.