Nortel stems the bleeding a bit in Q3

It's pretty hard to find anything positive to say about the state of Nortel, yet the company managed to narrow its ongoing losses from $3.41 billion in Q3 2008 to $508 million in Q3 2009.

Still, the company reported that revenue declined from $1.6 billion in Q3 08 to $1.05 billion. Nortel also had to deal with $52 million for employee layoffs and other payments that usually would have been listed in the special charges column of its earnings statement.

Amidst all of the drama over the third-quarter declines, Nortel's carrier VoIP and applications solutions unit saw its revenues increase 14 percent to $208 million. The company attributed the rise in its VoIP revenue to closing up various projects it already had in the can.  

At the same time, Nortel's flagship Metro Ethernet Networks division, which it is currently in the process of auctioning off [1], saw its revenues drop 26 percent to $295 million.

In its earnings release, Nortel said its "ongoing negative economic conditions and the uncertainty created by the Company's Creditor Protection Proceedings... resulted in a decrease in customers' spending levels."

For more:
- see the official company release here [2]

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