Alcatel-Lucent has posted financial results for the first quarter of 2014. The company has reported revenues of Euro 2,963 million, registering a year-on-year (y-o-y) growth of 0.3 per cent. Further, the company posted a net loss of EUR 73 million in the first quarter of 2014 as against a net loss of EUR 353 million in the corresponding quarter in 2013.

Revenues for the company (excluding managed services business) were up 3.9 per cent (y-o-y). Further, core networking business revenues grew by 6.9 per cent in the first quarter of 2014 over the corresponding quarter in 2013. The core networking revenue was largely driven by 16 per cent growth in IP routing and, to a lesser extent, by IP transport. Excluding managed services business where revenues declined by half reflecting Alcatel-Lucent’s strategy to terminate or restructure loss-making contracts, the access segment for the company grew by 2.1 per cent y-o-y.

Further, company’s gross margin reached 32.3 per cent of the total revenues in the quarter, improving by 410 basis points y-o-y. The improvement was driven essentially by favorable product mix and improved profitability in majority of the business divisions. In the first quarter of 2014, fixed costs savings reached Euro 143 million, bringing the total till-date savings to Euro 478 million, when combined with Euro 335 million in 2013 (which exclude Euro 28 million attributable to enterprise business).

For the first quarter of 2014, the adjusted operating income reached Euro 33 million (or 1.1 per cent of revenues in comparison) to Euro 179 million (or 5.8 per cent of the total revenues) in the corresponding quarter in 2013. The company claims that this turnaround was driven by a significant improvement in profitability in core networking business and a sizeable reduction of losses in access business.