Lucent Posts Net Income Of $387 Million For The Quarter

In a sign of continuing improvement in its business and in the telcom market generally, Lucent Technologies today reported its fourth consecutive quarter of profitability, showing net income of $387 million for the quarter ending June 30. The profit is a jump of more than $300 million over the $68 million of net income for Lucent's second quarter, even though revenue remained stuck at $2.19 billion. The revenue figure does represent about a 12 percent increase from the Lucent's third-quarter 2003 results.

Commenting on the positive results, CEO Patricia Russo cited sales progress in international markets, with contract wins in 20 countries during the quarter. Russo also attributed the healthy sales results to activity in VoIP, mobile high-speed data and broadband access.

Among Lucent contract wins over the past few weeks were deals for wireless, landline and cable TV networks in the U.S., Europe, Middle East and Asia.

Probably the most significant win was the Verizon Wireless contract announced last week. Worth a minimum of $5 billion, it calls for Lucent to supply network hardware, software and services for the carrier's national voice and data network. The deal keeps Lucent as the carrier's primary infrastructure supplier. With the Lucent products and services, Verizon will continue evolving toward its next-generation voice/video/data network while adding to the coverage and capacity of its current voice network and high-speed, wide-area BroadbandAccess data network based on CDMA2000 1xEV-DO technology.

Verizon's wireline side also awarded Lucent a big contract this week, becoming the first carrier to announce plans to deploy Lucent's LambdaXtreme Transport DWDM core optical networking solution as the carrier expands its services for large commercial and government customers by connecting existing regional networks in the U.S. over an IP backbone. The deployment is expected to reduce Verizon's capital and operating costs.