Palm narrows fourth-quarter loss

Palm is still losing money, but it shattered analyst estimates for its fiscal 2003 fourth quarter with a narrower-than-expected loss, the company said in a release Tuesday.

Palm is still losing money, but it shattered analyst estimates for its fiscal 2003 fourth quarter with a narrower-than-expected loss, the company said in a release Tuesday.

The company posted a fourth-quarter net loss for the period ended May 31 of $15 million on revenue of $225.8 million, according to generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). This compares to a fiscal 2002 fourth-quarter net loss of $27.5 million on revenue of $233.3 million.

“The handheld industry is continuing its recovery,” said Eric Benhamou, chairman and interim CEO, during a conference call following the earnings announcement. “Our focus on innovative solutions and operating discipline is paying off,” he said.

When measured on a non-GAAP basis, Palm posted a net loss of $8.9 million, or $0.30 a share. Analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call had predicted Palm to bring in revenue of $187.65 million, and post a net loss of $0.93 a share, on a non-GAAP basis, in estimates released prior to Palm’s announcement.

The non-GAAP figures exclude items such as a $2 million restructuring charge and a $3.8 million expense related to the pending separation of PalmSource, the company’s operating system subsidiary, Palm said. The PalmSource spin-off is planned for the third quarter, at the same time Palm expects its proposed acquisition of Handspring to close.

The better-than-expected results were due to strong sales of Palm’s Tungsten C and Zire 71 products, which were launched in April, said Judy Bruner, senior vice president and CTO. The company had been unsure how quickly those products would affect Palm’s bottom line but was pleasantly surprised by demand for the handhelds, she said.

The Milpitas, Calif., company shipped 931,000 Palm handhelds in the fourth quarter, for a total of 4.2 million units shipped during its 2003 fiscal year, it said. The company shipped about 1 million handhelds in its fiscal 2003 third quarter, according to its earnings news release for that quarter.

Sales of PDAs have fallen for the last two quarters, according to research from research company IDC. Palm still leads the market, but sales of its handhelds have been declining while sales of PDAs based on Microsoft’s Pocket PC operating system are rising.

This trend is beginning to turn around, Bruner said. Palm increased the number of its handhelds shipped from distributors to end-users worldwide by 5% in the fiscal 2003 fourth quarter, the first sequential increase in six quarters, she said.

For the full year, Palm’s revenue was down 15% from fiscal 2002 to $871.9 million. The company posted a GAAP net loss of $442.6 million for its fiscal 2003 year, compared to a loss of $82.2 million for its 2002 fiscal year.

Palm expects first-quarter revenue in its 2004 fiscal year to be between $175 million and $185 million, down sequentially due to seasonal trends, Bruner said.