I hate it when I'm right. Swedish mobile infrastructure giant LM Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC) turned in a great-looking report for the fourth quarter, with record revenues and earnings that each beat analyst expectations, yet the stock is down about 6% today. You see, the company didn't quite meet the lofty cash flow target set by CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg. $1.27 billion of operating cash flow in the quarter fell $370 million short of reaching breakeven for the full year.
Svanberg didn't do his shareholders any favors when he lowered the outlook for 2007 by "a couple percentage points," saying that the mobile infrastructure market should grow by about 5%, same as it did in 2006.
Ericsson is the hands-down global market leader for mobile network installations, leaving respectable competitors such as Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO), Motorola (NYSE:MOT), and Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU) eating its dust. Nokia (NYSE:NOK) and Siemens (NYSE:SI) got so sick of tasting gravel that they decided to combine their infrastructure divisions and put up a stiffer fight. But even that congress of giants didn't unseat Ericsson as No. 1.
The handset market is a different ball of wax altogether, and Ericsson's joint venture with Sony (NYSE:SNE) is far behind world leader Nokia and U.S. No. 1 Motorola. Sony Ericsson is gaining global market share, but you know what that means these days -- lower margins, lower profits.
A few irate readers emailed me after reading my forecast for Ericsson last night, wondering how the market could possibly punish a great result like the one everyone expected. Well, there's your answer, guys. If your CEO makes promises, you better make darn sure you can keep them -- and Ericsson couldn't.
Amazingly, none of these great companies have made it onto any of our Foolish newsletters yet. You could head over to our CAPS investor hive mind and tell us why you think Cisco or Motorola belong with the greatest investment ideas of our time -- or why they don't.
Fool contributor Anders Bylund holds no position in any of the companies discussed here. You can check out Anders' holdings if you like, and Foolish disclosure is always worth a read.
