AT&T Posts Big Loss on Falling Revenue

The company beat estimates, but posted a loss of almost $1 billion as sales continued to fall.

Author:: Michael Dunn
Publish date:: Apr 24, 2002 8:44 AM EDT

AT&T

posted a huge first-quarter net loss as sales continued to drop.

The company said that its total loss, including a charge for an accounting change, was $975 million, or 28 cents a share, compared with a loss of $192 million, or 10 cents a share, in the year-ago quarter. The company lost 5 cents a share from continuing operations, compared with a loss of 17 cents last year.

Excluding one-time items and other expenses and income, the company said it earned 6 cents a share from continuing operations, beating the consensus analyst estimate from Thomson Financial/First Call by 2 cents. Last year, AT&T lost 2 cents a share on the same basis.

Sales continued to drop, falling another 8.4% on a pro forma basis to $12 billion, in line with analyst estimates. The company said the declining revenues were due primarily to long-distance voice services, and that loss was partially offset by growth in broadband services as AT&T Broadband revenue grew 14% to $2.44 billion. The company plans to sell its broadband outfit to

Comcast

For the second quarter, AT&T said it expects to see a similar decline in sales because of continued long-distance weakness, but the company expects second-quarter pro forma earnings in the range of 1 cent to 4 cents a share. Wall Street analysts are expecting 4 cents.

Shares of AT&T closed at $13.85 Tuesday.