STRATEGIC PARTNERS
October 20, 1999
DAYTON, Ohio -- NCR reported third-quarter earnings that trounced Wall Street expectations, boosted by its ATM and retail automation businesses. NCR shares jumped 6 percent, or 1-13/16, to 28-11/16 in early NYSE trading. The company posted a third-quarter profit of $53 million, or 53 cents per diluted share. Analysts' consensus forecast was 41 cents, according to First Call/Thomson Financial. In last year's third quarter the company posted a profit of $25 million, or 25 cents a share. Revenues for the quarter declined 1.6 percent, to $1.53 billion from $1.56 billion a year earlier. The company said weakness in its computer hardware business hurt revenues. "We continued to experience the negative pull from declines in ... hardware, but we saw very strong growth in Financial Self Service and Retail Store Automation Solutions," NCR Chairman and CEO Lars Nyberg said in a statement. "Clearly, we are growing at the high end of the industry growth rates here." NCR has been shifting away from the hardware business in favor of its other businesses. The biggest revenue increase was in the retail automation unit, which includes such technologies as UPC bar code scanning, with a jump of 32 percent. Revenues for the financial self-service unit, which includes ATMs, grew 10 percent. NCR's data warehousing business saw revenues fall 4 percent.
