Motorola Earnings Almost Triple

Motorola Inc., the world’s second-largest cellphone maker, Tuesday posted a higher-than-expected fourth-quarter profit, but said sales in its phone unit fell in part because of delayed deliveries of new products.

The Schaumburg, Ill.-based company reported a fourth-quarter net profit of $489 million, or 20 cents a share, compared with $174 million, or 8 cents a share, in the year-ago quarter.

Excluding one-time items, Motorola earned 17 cents a share in the recent quarter, topping analysts’ estimates for a 13-cent profit. Results were helped by rising demand for various telecom products and services worldwide, the company said.

Sales in the quarter rose 4% to $8.02 billion from the year-ago quarter. But the cellphone business saw fourth-quarter sales slip 3% to $3.3 billion.

“It was a good quarter. It would have been a great quarter if they could have participated in the strength in demand for handsets their competitors saw,” said Charter Equity Research analyst Edward Snyder.

Motorola sounded upbeat about its outlook: It forecast first-quarter sales in its cellphone unit to rise 20% to 25% from last year, and first-quarter earnings overall to be in the range of 5 cents to 7 cents a share. Analysts, on average, were expecting 6 cents a share.

Motorola shares rose 10 cents to $17.05 on the New York Stock Exchange before the results were announced, then dipped to $16.93 in after-hours trading.