Office equipment maker Xerox Corporation has reported a surprise profit, before unusual items, for the 2001 fourth quarter and said it was confident of a profit for the full year 2002 as well.
Excluding restructuring charges and currency effects, the US-based company posted a profit of 15 US cents per share.
The consensus forecast of ten analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial/First Call was a loss of one cent per share, with estimates ranging from a loss of six cents to a profit of six cents.
Xerox reported a net loss of $4 million, or one cent a share, compared with a loss of $20 million, or four cents a share, a year earlier.
Fourth-quarter revenues were $4.3 billion, down 13 percent from $4.9 billion a year earlier.
Xerox chief executive Ms Anne Mulcahy said in a statement that recent decisions to exit certain businesses and cut costs "resulted in the strong performance delivered in the fourth quarter, including increased gross margins . . . reduction of inventory to historically low levels, and improved receivables. "The outcome is a return to operational profitability, representative of the new Xerox that is emerging from our successful turnaround," she said.