Investors also may have been discouraged by the company's forecast for 2005, which offered little assurance that the worst is over. Annual revenues are expected to shrink from 15 percent to 18 percent to between $25 billion and $26 billion, the company estimated Thursday.
And with rivals like MCI Corp. and the regional Bells still pricing aggressively in a bid to chip away at AT&T's large base of corporate clients, the company plans to remain competitive with prices.
``Do we need to continue to have the best value proposition, and be pricing in a way to keep our customer base in an erratic market place? Absolutely,'' AT&T President William Hannigan said in an interview, noting that the rate of decline in revenues has slowed over the past two quarters.
``Do we feel better about the market than a year ago? Absolutely. But it's hard to call a trend in this business. We've seen false positives before,'' said Hannigan. ``I don't know that the pricing pressure is going to go away. We still have too many competitors and too much capacity.''
For all of 2004, the company swung to a net loss $6.11 billion, or $7.68 per share, including $12.8 billion in charges for the asset writedowns and other restructuring moves. In 2003, AT&T earned $1.87 billion, or $2.36 per share.
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