After 6 years and $13.2B in losses, Alcatel-Lucent turns a profit in 2011

Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU), which has proffered disappointing earnings over the past six years during which it rolled up $13.17 billion in losses, Friday reported a $1.46 billion profit in 2011. Its first-ever profit for a full-year follows a $440 million loss in 2010. Shares rose on that news, on the company forecast for improved growth in 2012 and on plans to auction some of its 29,000 patents.

The company Friday said it had free cash flow of $714 million in the quarter, after negative cash from of almost $1.3 billion through the first nine months of the year.

While it did report a profit, some of that was attributable to $464.9 million of deferred tax assets in the United States and the sale of its Genesys unit, which closed in the quarter and brought in $445.1 million. Alcatel-Lucent said sales for the full year were down 2.1 percent to $20.19 billion from $20.64 billion in 2011.

The Irish Times reported that the sales of the company's patents could "generate several hundred million euros" in 2012; several analysts suggested the company could see up to €1 billion in revenue from the sales, which the telecom supplier is offering its patents through a licensing syndicate .

"Licensing is a hot trend in the tech sector right now, but if these numbers turn out to be true, maybe Alcatel should stop everything else and do only licensing," said Thomas Langer of WestLB Equity Markets in Dusseldorf, Germany.

For more:
- see this release
- see this Financial Times article
- see this Seeking Alpha transcript

Special Report: Enterprise Communications earnings in the fourth quarter 2011

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