Motorola confirms SEC inquiry

by Pia Landergren

April 5, 2001 —

THE U.S. SECURITIES and Exchange Commission (SEC) is making an informal inquiry into why a number of analysts recently revised their earnings estimates down for Motorola, the company confirmed Friday.

"The Securities and Exchange Commission has made an informal inquiry, and we are cooperating with them," said Motorola spokesperson Scott Wyman.

Various media reports on Thursday and Friday said that the SEC is looking into suspected violations of Regulation Fair Disclosure, a law that went into effect in October and which seeks to prevent companies from revealing information to analysts that could affect their stock price. All announcements on a public company's earnings and forecasts must be made to the public at the same time it's disclosed to analysts.

When asked if it was Motorola employees who had made the calls to analysts that led the analysts to revise their earnings estimates, Wyman said: "Not that I'm aware of." Employees from the investor relations department speak with analysts regularly, Wyman said. "But we don't believe there has been any violation of the full disclosure rule," he added.

"The key point here is that Motorola has not issued nor discussed any new information in addition to what we said on February 23," Wyman said.

On Feb. 27, a group of analysts polled by First Call/Thomson Financial predicted a loss of 4 cents per share for Motorola's first quarter. Then on March 8, analysts again revised their estimates down to a loss of 5 cents, on March 9 to a loss of 6 cents, and on March 10 to a loss of 7 cents, according to First Call/Thomson Financial. This is a long way down from the estimated 12 cents earnings per share that both Motorola and analysts had estimated before the company issued a profit warning on Feb. 23.

Motorola will announce its first-quarter earnings on April 10.

"We have no comment," said Carol Patterson, public affairs specialist at the SEC, when asked about the current inquiry. "As a rule, we don't comment on specific individuals or companies," she added.

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