Forex

hares surged in premarket trading Thursday after the struggling tech titan posted a minuscule second-quarter profit in spite of the latest sales decline at its handset unit. The Schaumburg, Ill.-based company made $4 million, or less than a penny a share, for the quarter, reversing the year-ago continuing operations loss of $38 million, or 2 cents a share. Excluding certain costs, the latest-quarter profit at Motorola was 2 cents a share - a nickel better than the Thomson Financial analyst estimate.

CEO Greg Brown, installed after a bruising battle with activist investor Carl Icahn led to the departure of former chief Ed Zander, cited solid results at the company’s networking and enterprise mobility segments. But the handset unit continued to struggle, with sales down 22% from a year ago to $3.3 billion and the segment operating loss widening to $346 million from $332 million a year ago. Motorola will have to start making some phones that people want to buy in order to rescue that sinking ship. In the meantime, investors are happy enough to see Motorola making a bit of money - the company expects to earn 6 to 8 cents a share for the year, beating the penny-a-share Thomson target. Shares rose 11%.