Lenovo fourth-quarter profit misses analyst estimates

Firm struggles to revive Motorola smartphone business it bought for $2.8 billion

Lenovo posted fourth-quarter profit that missed analysts' estimates as it struggles to revive the Motorola smartphone brand and the personal computer market continues to slide.

Net income was $180 million in the three months ended March, Beijing-based Lenovo said in a filing on Thursday.

Lenovo has been struggling to revive the Motorola smartphone business it bought for $2.8 billion in 2014 as its devices lose market share in China and growth in the global industry slows.

The company is focusing more on overseas markets and cutting costs after slipping outside the top five globally, compounding the challenge of a shrinking PC industry that is hurting its biggest business by sales.”

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It will take more than cost cutting to fundamentally turn around the smartphone business," Grace Chen, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, said in a report.

Shares of Lenovo fell 0.4 per cent to HK$4.98 in Hong Kong before the earnings were announced.

The stock reached a five-year low earlier this month.Lenovo swung to a full-year loss of $128 million compared with net income of $829 million a year earlier.”

Looking forward, the markets where the group is in will remain challenging in the short term,” the company said in the statement.

Chief executive officer Yang Yuanqing is eliminating jobs while seeking to make the company’s devices more competitive.

The company said cost savings of $690 million were achieved in the second half and it’s on pace to achieve its annualized target of $1.35 billion.