Ncr Faces Tough Road Without At&T;

Sat., Sept. 28, 1996

Compiled From Wire Services

AT&T’s difficulty in stemming huge losses at NCR Corp. underscores the challenges the specialized computer company will face when it goes solo again early next year.

NCR has sucked nearly $2.8 billion from AT&T Corp. in recent years as AT&T struggled to keep it afloat, AT&T disclosed in a filing late Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The filing was the first formal step of AT&T’s planned spinoff of NCR, which it acquired for $7.4 billion in September 1991 after a long takeover battle that proved to be an ill-fated bid to integrate phones and computers.

AT&T’s cash went to restructure the company, including thousands of layoffs, as well as to try to boost sales of NCR’s automated teller machines, grocery store bar-code scanners and other retail-store terminals. AT&T also pared NCR’s product lineup, eliminating personal computers last year.

Like other manufacturers who specialized in big computers, NCR was hurt by the shift in demand from large mainframe computers to networks of PCs and workstations.

Partly due to the restructuring, NCR has had net losses totaling $3.85 billion since 1993 - $1 billion more than previously made public - AT&T said in the filing.

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Ncr Faces Tough Road Without At&T;

Jesse Tinsley

Jim Meehan

Molly Quinn

Rob Curley

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