AT&T; Move Creates Fourth-Quarter Loss : Earnings: Company sets aside $1.3 billion to comply with new accounting rules. Figure also reflects costs associated with NCR restructuring.

AT&T; said Friday it will set aside $1.3 billion to comply with new accounting rules that chiefly cover how severance payments are reflected on a company’s books.

The move will reduce AT&T;’s fourth-quarter earnings after taxes by about 96 cents a share, resulting in a loss. Without it, the company said it would have earned $1.15 billion, or 85 cents a share, which would be in line with analysts’ expectations.

In addition to the accounting charges, AT&T; said its 1993 results will also reflect about $120 million in costs associated with restructuring NCR Corp., its computer manufacturing subsidiary. NCR last fall offered early retirement incentives to 5,000 of its 27,000 employees.

Accounting rules, which most public companies follow, impacted AT&T; earlier in 1993 as well.

In the first quarter, AT&T; set aside $7 billion to comply with a new standard for the way retiree health benefits are accounted. With a small gain from adopting a new rule on federal tax liability, AT&T; before Friday had accounting charges of $6.64 billion for the year.

Excluding the charges, the company earned $3.11 billion, or $2.30 a share, in the first nine months of 1993, up 11% from a year earlier.

The new rules come from the Financial Accounting Standards Board, a quasi-government body.

The board has given companies until their first fiscal quarter of 1994 to adopt the latest rule.

It says companies must regularly set aside amounts that estimate potential costs for severance or disability payments to all employees over the course of their working lives. Now, companies only set aside amounts that are actually paid to specific employees.

In contrast to the rules on retiree benefits and tax liability, which affected most large companies, the impact of the new rule is less clear since companies have greater discretion in its application.

Before AT&T;’s announcement, the largest company to get attention for such a charge was General Electric, which set aside $1.3 billion before taxes in the second quarter of last year.

AT&T; spokesman Dick Gray said the company’s adoption of the rule reflects an acknowledgment that it expects to pay disability and severance benefits in the future.

“We don’t have any specific predictions about how many people will have disabilities or will leave with severance,” Gray said.

In addition to the NCR employees, AT&T; has announced plans to cut 3,000 to 4,000 telephone operator positions from April to early next year.

Gray said, however, that the charges would not affect the company’s goal of at least 10% earnings growth.

AT&T; stock closed up 37.5 cents at $54.50 on the New York Stock Exchange Friday.