CEO Watch - Alcatel Lucent, Patricia Russo, Update 2

Alcatel-Lucent CEO, Patrica Russo, continues to walk on thin ice. Despite her efforts to revive company earnings and sales results have been lacking. How much longer can the board and shareholders keep her at the top. Scott Morris in a piece for TheStreet.com wrote,

The Paris telecom-equipment maker posted an adjusted quarterly loss of $73 million, or 3 cents a share. While that was an improvement over the 36-cent pro forma loss in the year-ago quarter, it was well below the profit of 15 cents analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial were expecting.

For the fourth quarter, sales were up 18% from a year ago to $7.6 billion, but for the full year, the top line of $25.7 billion was a 2% decrease from 2006 levels. Analysts expected $7.3 billion in sales for the fourth quarter and $24.8 billion for the full year.

In story in today's Bloomberg, Rudy Ruitenberg wrote that Alcatel-Lucent,

...reported the biggest quarterly loss since its creation in 2006 and scrapped the dividend after cutting the value of a wireless-networks unit.

The loss swelled to 2.58 billion euros ($3.74 billion) in the fourth quarter from 615 million euros a year earlier...

Russo will definitely remain on the CEO Watch list unless she can find a real solution to the company's problems. Keep a close eye on the firm, this cannot continue.

For more on the company's problems:

Reuters
Barrons
Times Online
Financial Times
Business Week
International Herald Tribune