Motorola Inc., riding a wave of unprecedented demand for its computer chips, wireless communications equipment and electronics products, posted record sales and earnings in the first quarter, the company said Monday.
The Schaumburg-based electronics giant said it earned $204 million, or 75 cents a share, in the first quarter, up from $125 million, or 47 cents a share, a year earlier. Sales jumped to $3.63 billion, up 19 percent from $3.05 billion in the first quarter of 1992.
The report was substantially better than Wall Street had expected. Zacks Investment Research had put analysts’ consensus estimate for earnings at 64 cents a share.
On the New York Stock Exchange, Motorola shares closed up $2.37, at $71, a 365-day high. (The earnings report was issued after the market closed; within an hour Motorola shares had gained another dollar, to $72, on the so-called “third market.”)
Motorola’s growth in the quarter reflected continued worldwide enthusiasm for the company’s products, said George M.C. Fisher, chairman and chief executive. But it also reflected unrealized potential for the company’s products in new markets, he added.
“The potential is especially great in developing regions, with China as an outstanding example,” he said. “We continue to experience good growth in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as in the U.S.”
“This is not just a blip on the financial monitor. . . . Motorola is really on a roll,” said Mona Eraiba, of ATI Financial. “The company is so broadly based, almost every product area they compete in, they are successful in.”
The secret, Eraiba said, is Motorola’s ability to compete globally.
“This is a truly global company that manages to compete worldwide against the Japanese, against the Europeans, without relying on politicians to get them business or on political trade issues to open doors,” she said.
Motorola said semiconductor sales increased 20 percent, to $1.28 billion, in the first quarter.
Gary Tooker, president and chief operating officer, said part of the reason for the strong showing in the semiconductor division was enthusiastic customer response to the company’s new reduced instruction set computing, or RISC, microprocessor, developed jointly with IBM.
The company’s communication segment, which includes the Land Mobile Products sector and the Paging and Wireless Data Group, registered a 19 percent increase in sales, to $1.09 billion.
In Motorola’s general systems sector, which includes the cellular division, sales were up 33 percent, to $1.06 billion.
