The thing is, it's easy to forget that Nortel (NT) is a billion dollar corporation. The company expects a cash burn rate of $800 million for 2009, but it also has billions in cash and back orders. Yet shares traded Wednesday at $0.50. We all know how it got there, but still, talk about lack of confidence.

Some excerpts from Nortel Networks Corp.'s Q308 conference call:

Orders of $2.0 billion remain under pressure given the weak macro environment, with carrier making up the majority of the decline on a year-over-year basis… [We’re expecting] Q4 revenues of approximately $2.7 billion and a corresponding operating margin of approximately 9%.

We currently have cash and short-term investments of $2.6 billion. We believe we need under normal business conditions about $1.0 billion in cash. This does not include the cash and joint ventures in China and this $1.0 billion plus the cash requirements for China to run our business effectively. Our next debt maturity is not until 2011 and we do not have any specific maintenance covenants on that debt.

Good deals going:
We have announced a number of important wins across our Q3. With unified communications we have announced important wins with HSBC, the New York Mets, Vancouver Canucks, Bloomberg, and a number of other companies to really driving content in their product line.

Also, Deloitte chose us as their tele presence global partner in the optical business of 40-gig count is now up to 31 wins with recent announcements with companies like Bell Canada and Southern Cross.

In the carrier space we have solid momentum including very important LTE’s wins including not only in North America but also... we got T-Mobile in Europe and Asia and just this morning we saw renewed TD spend in China, starting with the significant China Telecomm win, to upgrade portions of their network.

Industry outlook- if you can understand the syntax:

Since September 17, [we’ve seen] a much more cautious view, and purchase orders being eliminated and/or at minimum deferred. What we are doing internally, I believe it is a microcosm of what many companies are going through, in a stage of de-leveraging of their businesses.

I would argue that the actions which this management team has taken in the last two to three years, whether it was a legal exposure, whether it was a cost structure, whether there was investing 55% of our R&D legacy in dying technologies has been changed dramatically… We have worked with a great level of determination to have assets and technologies that would drive the company forward, they will be driving growth.

And we have also said, a consolidation will be important, but in the carrier space and whether that consolidation takes the place of partnerships or other activities, certainly we are not blind to those potentials.

It’s a global economy:
We are announcing a reduction of an additional net 1,300 positions… Our headcount at the end of September was just under 25,000, prior to these actions being taken place… We do have a pretty meaningful number of employees with our joint venture partners in Turkey and China and other places.

Source:seekingalpha