SCHAUMBURG, Ill. (AP) -- Motorola Solutions Inc., which sells communications equipment to government and corporate customers, on Wednesday said its second-quarter net income declined from a year ago, when the company sold a division.
The company also raised its dividend and announced a share buyback.
Motorola Solutions earned $182 million, or 60 cents per share, in the April to March period. That's down from earnings of $349 million or $1 per share a year earlier. Excluding the proceeds from sale of its network equipment division in the year-ago quarter, Motorola earned 14 cents per share then.
Excluding the cost of stock-based compensation and some one-time items, earnings were 70 cents per share in the latest quarter, beating the average forecast of analysts polled by FactSet by 1 cent per share.
Revenue increased 8 percent to $2.15 billion from $1.98 billion. Analysts were expecting $2.11 billion.
The company said sales in its government segment, which sells police radios, grew 14 percent to $1.46 billion. Sales in its corporate segment fell 2 percent to $689 million, in part due to the wind-down of its cellular network division. Sprint is decommissioning its Nextel network, which uses Motorola technology.
For the current quarter, which ends in September, Motorola expects adjusted earnings of 69 cents to 74 cents per share. It expects revenue to grow 5 percent to 6 percent from $2.11 billion last year.
Analysts have been expecting earnings of 78 cents per share on revenue of $2.19 billion, which would be an increase of 4 percent.
Motorola Solutions shares rose $1.65, or 3.6 percent, to $46.92 in morning trading Wednesday.
Also Wednesday, the company said it is increasing its regular quarterly cash dividend from 22 cents to 26 cents per share. That equates to an annual dividend yield of 2.2 percent. The next dividend will be payable on Oct. 15 to shareholders of record on Sept. 14.
The Schaumburg, Ill., company also said it has authorized up to $2 billion in share repurchases. Its previous authorization was for $3 billion in buybacks, of which $2.9 billion have been used up.
Motorola Solutions is half of the former Motorola Inc., which split into two companies in January 2011. Google Inc. has bought the other half, Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. It makes cellphones and cable set-top boxes.
