Telesis Predicts Its Profit Will Top $1 Billion in ’86

Pacific Telesis Group, the parent of Pacific Bell, will report earnings of more than $1 billion this year, the company’s chairman and chief executive, Donald Guinn, predicted Tuesday.

Guinn, speaking before the Los Angeles Society of Financial Analysts, said Pacific Telesis surpassed the $1-billion mark for the first time during November. The San Francisco-based company previously reported that its earnings for the first nine months of the year were $842 million, up 16.8% from a year earlier, on revenue of $6.8 billion, up 7.3%.

Pacific Telesis reported net income of $929 million on revenue of $8.5 billion in 1985, when it was ranked among the nation’s most profitable companies.

Guinn said the company’s unregulated businesses, all formed since Pacific Telesis was established nearly three years ago, will bring in about $350 million in revenue in 1986. But, he said, those subsidiaries--which, among other things, market office automation equipment, provide cellular radio service and publish specialized directories--are not yet profitable because of the cost of rapid expansion.

Nonetheless, Guinn said, the unregulated units have increased the company’s market value by more than $1 billion.