Motorola Inc. announced its first-quarter results to market enthusiasm, generating its best stock momentum in three years.
Its shares rose $3.11 to $19.33, representing a 20-percent leap.
The vendor reported net earnings of $609 million, or 25 cents per share, in contrast with the same period a year ago when it had net earnings of $169 million, or 7 cents per share. This represents a 257-percent jump.
The company’s sales swung up in its four main business divisions with wireless implications, including handsets, infrastructure, semiconductors, and government, commercial and industrial products.
“We are making steady progress in boosting our financial performance and creating value for our stockholders. I also believe these results reflect increasing momentum for our evolving vision of seamless mobility,” said Motorola Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ed Zander. “Our growing portfolio of products, seamlessly connected, will bring voice, media, and data-rich services to people wherever they are: at home, at work, in the auto or out in the world.’
Sales rose 42 percent to $8.6 billion for the quarter compared with $6 billion in the year-ago period. In its handset division known as the personal communications segment, sales rose 67 percent to $4.1 percent compared with the same period last year. The division had operating earnings of $398 million unlike the $114 million it posted in the same period last year. The company attributes the higher earnings to a 51-percent hike in handset shipments, which reached 25.3 million. The company announced 25 new handsets.
In related Motorola handset news, the company said it will license Research In Motion Ltd.’s popular BlackBerry wireless e-mail service on some of Motorola’s mobile phones. The agreement follows a series of similar deals between RIM and other wireless device makers.
In its infrastructure division, sales rose 38 percent to $1.3 billion compared with the year-ago period. The operating earnings were $119 million compared with $29 million in the same period last year. In its semiconductor business, newly named Freescale Semiconductor Inc., the company savored a 21-percent rise in sales in contrast with the figures of the same quarter last year. The company filed a registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to make its chip business a separate publicly traded company.
In its commercial, government and industrial solutions division, it had a sales surge of 18 percent, amounting to $1 billion, compared with the same period last year.
