Nortel records profit for Q3

BANGALORE: Nortel Networks said it had a third-quarter profit, from loss a year earlier, as the company had fewer costs for recent acquisitions. Net income was $8 million, or less than one cent a share, compared with a loss of $181 million, or 17 cents, a year ago.

Excluding gain and acquisition costs, Nortel had profit of $380 million or 28 cents, in the recent period. Sales rose 30 percent to $5.39 billion, driven by fiber-optic gear and equipment used for high-speed Internet access.

"The demand for bandwidth today seems to be insatiable," said Nortel chief executive John Roth. He also said the company could see further gains following the resolution of technology issues related to the year 2000. Revenue numbers were helped by the addition of a full quarter of results from Bay Networks, which Nortel acquired in August 1998. The year-ago period included only a month of Bay results.

Roth pointed to the year 2000 as one reason for the tepid results. He also added plans are to re-package the company's current technology to make it more customer-friendly. Earnings excluding gains and acquisition costs in the recent quarter beat the 26 cent average estimate of analysts polled by First Call. Before a gain and acquisition costs in the year-ago period, the company had profit of $236 million, or 21 cents a share. Sales a year ago were $4.14 billion.