Alcatel keeps draining earnings made by Lucent so I doubt this company can ever go a whole year of positive EPS, since it has trouble doing 2 in a row.
Now, go figure this out, Alcatel buys-out Lucent dirt cheap then carries them through until they start making money so for at least 3 years now they drain profits for the Lucent they carried. Seems like an anti-income tax maneuver by $ALU to me, especially when a couple of years or so ago they were supposed to be worth 9/share on just on feature... which is what being used now under a different name everywhere (the black box item for large buildings for networking (Internet)). So I guess all this massive profits from network/router upgrades for faster Internet is just being buried by depreciation, write-downs, creative accounting to avoid income tax. If Alcatel had a brain, (oh they do in Bell Labs but that's not management), they would buyback shares slowly but surely below 3 for sure and sell again in double digits for financing when they needed it, instead of whatever they're doing with profits... I hate the corporate world of wasting our money on CEO salaries... they're not in close to being worth anything close to a million not matter how could they are. If they want to share in their success they should buy share of the company they are running like a normal person does, or resign and do something else. This stick it to shareholders has got to stop.