“Standard & Poor’s said Friday it cut the long-term corporate credit rating on Motorola Inc. to BB+, or junk status, from BBB. The rating agency also took the company’s ratings off review for a possible further downgrade,” Wallace Witkowski reports for MarketWatch Pulse.
“‘The current rating action reflects continual operational challenges in the Mobile Devices unit, which are not likely to be reversed over the intermediate term, leading to depressed profitability and returns, adjusted debt leverage over 4x, and substantially diminished free cash flows,’ said Bruce Hyman, an S&P credit analyst, in a statement,” Witkowski reports.
Full article here.
In May 2007, Motorola’s then-Chairman and then-CEO Ed Zander boasted that his company was ready for competition from Apple’s iPhone, due out the following month. “How do you deal with that?” Zander was asked at the Software 2007 conference. Zander quickly retorted, “How do they deal with us?”