CHICAGO -- Struggling cell phone maker Motorola Inc. said Thursday that its first-quarter loss widened as sales in the company's key handset unit fell 39 percent, extending a two-year slump.
The results come as Motorola is in the midst of a massive upheaval, announcing plans earlier this spring to split itself into two publicly traded companies as it struggles to revive its cell phone unit. The company has a new chairman as well as a new chief executive and has seen a fleet of senior executives leave in recent months.
The suburban Chicago company said it lost $194 million, or 9 cents per share, for the quarter ending March 31. That's worse than the company's year-ago loss of $181 million, or 8 cents per share.
Sales fell about 21 percent to $7.45 billion, down from $9.43 billion a year ago.
The worse-than-expected performance fell short of Wall Street expectations.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial predicted a loss of 7 cents per share on sales of $7.75 billion.
For the second quarter, Schaumburg-based Motorola said it expects to lose 2 to 4 cents per share from continuing operations. Analysts expected a loss of 1 cent per share.
Its shares fell 35 cents, or 3.7 percent, to $9.20 in premarket trading.
"During the first quarter, we made an important strategic decision to separate the company, creating two independent, publicly traded entities," Greg Brown, who became Motorola's president and chief executive in January, said in a statement.
Motorola said Thursday that its cell phone unit lost $418 million during the quarter, nearly 80 percent more than the $233 million it lost during the same period last year. Meanwhile, the company's home and networks mobility division, which sells TV set-top boxes and modems, saw its operating profit shrink by eight percent to $153 million. The only bright spot in the company's financial performance continued to be its enterprise mobility solutions division, which sells computing and communications equipment to businesses. That unit saw its operating profits grow 9 percent.
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