Gregory Q. Brown
Analyst · Craig Hettenbach with Goldman Sachs
Thanks, Ed. In the Government business, our sales for the quarter were $1.4 billion, up 9% over Q3 2010, growth was solid in all regions and particularly strong in Asia and Latin America. Profitability for the segment also improved, with operating earnings representing 16.2% of sales this quarter compared to 13.8% in Q3 of last year. This increase in operating earnings was driven by our ability to grow revenues faster than operating costs. This quarter marks the seventh consecutive quarter year-over-year growth -- or year-over-year growth in our Government business, which demonstrates the priority that mission-critical communications spending receives among the federal and state and local governments. In the U.S., state tax revenues have increased for 6 consecutive quarters. The recent National League of City fiscal condition survey showed that municipalities are better able to meet financial needs in 2011 and in the prior 2 years, with public safety being one of the least likely areas to be impacted due to budget constraints. In August, we participated in APCO International's 77th Annual Conference and demonstrated our leadership in both the standards process and interoperability for first responders. During the show, we announced several exciting new products, including shipment of our latest version of ASTRO as the industry's first commercially available P25 system with Phase II TDMA, a technology which doubles the voice capacity of P25 Phase I for more efficient use of spectrum. We already have 18 customers signed up for this release. And during the quarter, we shipped the $14 million project for Washington D.C. and added a contract with the city of Cleveland for $38 million. To complement our award-winning APX 7000 radio, we released the first remote speaker microphone designed for firefighters. Another example of innovation that produces life-saving technology for firefighters around the world is Speaker Mic. It features a 2-microphone design that cancels out distracting background noise and has an emergency light activated mid-smoke. Our innovation was on display at APCO with products of the future as well, including a newly designed ultimate patrol vehicle in partnership with General Motors. This vehicle has improved ergonomic designs with integration of our public safety LTE, voice recognition and video solutions in the car. Demand for our APX radio continues to grow, highlighted by a $30 million contract with Jefferson County 911 dispatch in Missouri and a $5 million award with the state of New Jersey and several multi-million-dollar awards from the Department of Justice to continue rolling out APX radios to numerous agencies. Internationally, in ASTRO, we received a $7 million award for an ASTRO P25 nationwide system expansion for the National Police of Colombia, and in Mexico, a $4 million ASTRO P25 network to the public safety State Council of Jalisco, which will help support the 2011 Pan American Games in Guadalajara. In TETRA, we had another good quarter with an award for the state of Hessen, Germany that includes over 50,000 radios along with service and support, a deal that follows several other recent TETRA wins in other federal states in Germany. We also renewed a managed services and support agreement with Airwave for $95 million to support their TETRA network in the U.K., which is the largest TETRA network in the world, with over 250,000 subscribers in nationwide coverage. In Asia Pac, we won multi-million-dollar awards with Shangdong Police and Kunming metro in China. In addition to our leadership and public safety mission-critical voice standards of P25 and TETRA, we continue to innovate in the professional and commercial market segments for voice communications, including the digital mobile radio standard. For example, this past quarter, we celebrated a milestone of having shipped over 1 million units of MOTOTRBO, the first digital radio in the professional market segment, that we introduced in 2007. Today, over 1/3 of our new shipments in this portfolio are now digital as users embrace the improved coverage and audio quality as well as an entire array of new features for these radios, like GPS, location-based services, email, alerts, text messaging, work order tickets and many more enabled by our applications developer community. In our Government non-voice portfolio of mission-critical applications that we call integrated command and control, we gained momentum with our new PremierOne software platform, including a $3 million award for Will County, Illinois to support the administration of the countywide enhanced 911 system and a $3 million contract for a new 911 emergency call system for the Royal Bahamas Police Force, which will automate the dispatch of police and emergency vehicles and eliminate the need for officers in the field to report their location back to the command center. A recent study by The Urban Institute evaluated 3 major cities that installed video surveillance systems and found that while crime reduction varied among the cities, those who actively monitored the cameras reduced crime in a cost-effective manner. Another example of a Motorola Solutions customer that's adopting this technology is Chattanooga, Tennessee with the implementation of a mesh network that includes video cameras and laptops for police cars. In public safety LTE, opportunities in North America continue to evolve, with additional demand in the Gulf states and parts of Latin America. For example, we recently announced Motorola Solutions will help the Brazilian Army test 4G LTE technologies for mobile broadband applications for public security, operating in the 700 megahertz frequency range. We continue to demonstrate our leadership in next-generation public safety LTE. We recently announced our first devices for LTE: a vehicle modem which is installed in a patrol car or other public safety vehicle to create an in-car network with broadband connection back to headquarters. And a USB LTE modem that allows mobile computers to access the public safety LTE network. Together with Verizon Wireless, we demonstrated a first-ever LTE public-private interoperability capability when a patrol vehicle outfitted with dynamic public safety applications maintained its live data sessions while seamlessly switching between the Motorola public safety LTE network and the commercial Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network. The applications featured on the vehicle included computer-aided dispatch, automate license plate recognition and live surveillance video. So moving to the Enterprise segment. Sales in the enterprise segment were $726 million, an increase of 13% from Q3 of 2010, which was led by growth in our enterprise mobile computing and wireless LAN portfolios. Operating earnings expanded to 18.6% of sales from 17.8% last year. Mobile computing, our largest product segment within Enterprise, continues to grow at double digits. In fact, the third quarter was a record revenue quarter for this business as customers around the world deploy our mobile computing solutions to streamline their costs, enhance their top line and drive business transformation. Our mobile computing solutions are being used in a wide array of enterprise environments in customer-facing situations at a retail store to package delivery in one of the most remote places in the world. Our Enterprise customers demand durable devices that offer a life cycle beyond the normal consumer device together with enterprise-class security device management and flexibility. In addition to growth in core verticals like retail and transportation and logistics, demand for our enterprise mobile computing portfolio includes an increasing number of wide area network-enabled devices. Our mobile computing portfolio now ships with over 35% of devices including carrier WAN options, reflecting expanded-use cases among knowledge workers who travel outside the traditional 4 walls of LAN coverage in areas like field mobility and sales. Improving upon our offering of unique industrial designs for our highly rugged mobile computer portfolio, we expanded our lineup of mobile computers for hazardous environments with Havelock [ph]-certified rugged device design to meet the needs of a broad range of mobile workers in the manufacturing, government, petrochemical and pharmaceutical industries. We recently unveiled the ET1 tablet, the first in an emerging category of enterprise-class tablets designed for verticals like retail, manufacturing and logistics. The ET1 brings a true enterprise-class device with enhanced durability, an optional bar code scanner and magnetic stripe reader, hot-swappable battery packs and secure system software. Intended for demanding day-long use, the Wi-Fi-enabled ET1 includes encryption and device management features that enable the device to be shared and provision for each employee according to the respective level of responsibility. The ET1, an entire mobile computing portfolio, will be supported by Motorola's portfolio of enterprise-grade software modules, including RhoElements, a new HTML5 application enablement framework from our recently acquired Rhomobile. Using this framework, businesses can now quickly and cost-effectively develop enterprise applications once and deploy them on both traditional Windows Embedded Handheld and Android-based Motorola devices. Demand for our enterprise mobile computing solutions among customers in transportation and logistics also remain strong. We won deals with Posten Logistik Group in Sweden for 10,000 MC65 units and with DHL in France for 1,500 units of the MC9500 series enabled with proof-of-delivery applications. We continue to grow in the utilities vertical as well, with examples like GDF Suez, a French multinational energy company who chose our MC65 for field mobility use; and Eskom, the electricity company which supplies 95% of South Africa's energy, now uses 5,000 MC75 devices in their fleet. In retail, we've seen continued adoption of personal shopping and self-scanning solutions enabled with our MC17 device. For example, after a successful pilot, Jumbo Supermarkets in the Netherlands decided on a $15 million -- sorry, $5 million store rollout of over 6,500 devices. In scanning, a transition from laser to imaging in advanced data capture products continues to drive growth. A primary driver for this transition is the requirement for retailers to read several types of bar codes, including traditional 1D bar codes and new 2D matrix bar codes, such as quick-response codes. These new bar codes are often read from a consumer shopper's smartphone with mobile applications such as coupons and loyalty programs. Retailers of all sizes are investing in tools to read these scans and capture the information to improve customer service and encourage customer loyalty. Building on this trend, we unveiled 2 new products in the past quarter, including the compact DS457 fixed-mount imager and a sleek MK3000 micro kiosk, offering premium 1D and 2D scanning capabilities as well as the ability to read bar codes for mobile phones. In RFID, we unveiled a next-generation industrial-class fixed RFID reader. This RFID reader is designed for reading RFID-enabled pallets in bulk cases at dock doors, conveyors and other industrial read points that require high reader performance for rugged environments. In the enterprise wireless LAN, we have a leadership position in our largest verticals, such as retail. In addition to the vertical demand expertise and integration with the rest of our portfolio, WLAN differentiators for us include air defense and voice-over-wireless-LAN clients for our devices. Raley's, a $3 billion grocery store chain on the West Coast, recently chose our WLAN solution combined with deployment and maintenance services for all of their 140 stores. Our WLAN portfolio recently was recognized with a 2011 Research PilotHouse Award for market leaders based on our strength in technology, customer service and overall value. Last quarter, we announced the formation of our Global Advanced Services team, led by Bruce Brda. I'm proud to report the recent contract with Sears demonstrates the power of this organization working with our field teams. Over 83 years ago, our first recorded sale was to Sears, Roebuck. And today, Sears is transforming the way it serves increasingly connected tech-savvy shoppers. Sears recognized the need to modernize their existing network infrastructure, and they wanted a different model to align their business objectives with service level agreements from a leader in its industry. Together, we developed a life cycle proposal where we offered to build and operate and secure Sears' mobility infrastructure to enable on-the-go capabilities for its associates and better mobile experiences for its shoppers. The result is a strategic relationship and a significant enterprise managed services contract, which draws from our entire services portfolio including integration, managed infrastructure and air defense security services. Now turning to a total regional view for the company all in, we saw growth in each one of our regions in Q3. North America sales were up 6%, which includes a 5% increase in Government. EMEA delivered solid double-digit growth, driven by continued strength in Enterprise and growth in Government. Growth in Asia was solid double-digits balanced across Enterprise and Government, while Latin America also posted a solid double-digit growth in Government and Enterprise. Our solutions portfolio is more focused than ever on delivering mission-critical solutions to our core customers with the announced sale of our point-to-point Orthogon and point-to-multipoint Canopy businesses. This business represented approximately $170 million in annual revenues and was not strategic to our core focus of Enterprise and Government customers. Let me close today's call by saying that we had an exceptional quarter, characterized by growth in Enterprise and Government and across all of our regions. We also demonstrated operating margin expansion and significant return of capital to shareholders. We did this while continuing to improve our cost structure and investing in strategic initiatives that we believe will improve our long-term positioning as a company.