Nortel is out with its 4Q08 numbers, and as expected, they're not encouraging, with the voice side of the house declining more rapidly than the overall business in 4Q08 versus the year-ago quarter.Enterprise voice revenues fell 34% in 4Q08 compared with 4Q07 ($347 million and $529 million, respectively); in contrast, the decline in company revenues was 15%, from $3.198 billion in 4Q07 to $2.722 billion in 4Q08.
Quarterly revenues in the Enterprise Solutions category (including data gear) fell 30% year-over-year. For the full year, Enterprise solutions were down 8% from 2007 to 2008.
Annual overall company revenues declined 5% Y/Y, and annual revenues fell by the same percentage within Enterprise circuit and packet voice, which declined from $1.723 billion for 2007 to $1.64 billion for 2008.
In its release, Nortel stated that, "Compared to the year ago quarter, ES [Enterprise Solutions] revenues were negatively impacted by lower volumes in all businesses and geographies and unfavourable effects of foreign exchange."
The company called out the following highlights for the Enterprise business:
* Verizon Business selected Nortel to help deliver a new managed telepresence offering that allows organizations to collaborate over IP networks.
* Bharti Airtel, India's leading integrated telecom services provider, and Nortel announced an enhanced managed services agreement under which Nortel will continue to provide its contact centre technology solution.
* Ringier AG, Switzerland's largest publishing house deployed a unified communications solution built on fully-integrated technologies from Nortel and Microsoft.
* Just months after announcing its incubation efforts to develop web.alive, a new virtual world business application, Nortel announced that Lenovo, one of the world's largest manufacturers of personal computers, is using the application in a new online virtual store as a way to give consumers an exciting new avenue for e-commerce.
* Bharti Airtel, India's leading integrated telecom services provider, and Nortel announced an enhanced managed services agreement under which Nortel will continue to provide its contact centre technology solution.
* Ringier AG, Switzerland's largest publishing house deployed a unified communications solution built on fully-integrated technologies from Nortel and Microsoft.
* Just months after announcing its incubation efforts to develop web.alive, a new virtual world business application, Nortel announced that Lenovo, one of the world's largest manufacturers of personal computers, is using the application in a new online virtual store as a way to give consumers an exciting new avenue for e-commerce.
Since Nortel didn't file for bankruptcy protection until January 2009, these results don't include the effects of that filing.
Here's CEO Mike Zafirovski's view of the silver lining in the 4Q report:
The fourth quarter revenues decreased 15 percent as the market continued to deteriorate and customers either reduced or deferred spending. However, strong operating performance focused on customers, costs and cash resulted in meeting or exceeding guidance for management operating margin and cash. The management operating margin was the highest since 2000, key customer performance and quality metrics were also at multi-year highs, and our fourth quarter operating expenses were down 30 percent from the prior year.
Nortel's loss for the quarter was $2.135 billion, compared with a fourth-quarter loss of $844 million in 4Q07.
