Motorola Solutions posted revenues of $2.25 billion for the quarter ended December 2018, a growth of 15% year-over-year. The growth has been led by strong demand in land mobile radio sales in the Americas and the EMEA region as well as continued growth of the company's software business. For Q1 2019, the company has guided for year-over-year revenue growth of about 11%.
In Q4, approximately $159 million was related to acquisitions, and $25 million was related to the adoption of ASC 606. The Products and Systems Integration segment grew 16 percent driven by the Americas and EMEA. The Services and Software segment grew 12 percent with growth in all regions.
Also, the software and services sales expanded by roughly 12% to $584 million, driven by growth across its geographic markets. The backlog for the segment also rose from about $6.2 billion in Q3 to around $7.4 billion, driven primarily by multi-year services agreements in the Americas as well as the extension of the contract for the company's Airwave digital radio network in the United Kingdom. Motorola has been doubling down on command center software – which is essentially an end-to-end solution that integrates intelligence and analytics with dispatch systems via a comprehensive software suite.
The company ended the quarter with backlog of $10.6 billion, up $988 million from the year-ago quarter. Services and Software backlog was up 18 percent or $1.1 billion primarily due to growth in the Americas and the Airwave contract extension through the end of 2022. Products and Systems Integration backlog was down $116 million primarily on two large system deployments in the Middle East and Africa. Products and System Integration backlog grew in the Americas and AP.
CEO Greg Brown said on the earnings call, the company has “a healthy balance sheet and durable growing cash flows that will drive continued shareholder returns over the long term.” It's hardly shocking to see Motorola's shares rise on this persuasive earnings report.
“From strong organic revenue growth and cash generation to record EPS and backlog, we delivered an outstanding 2018, capped by an excellent fourth quarter,” said Brown.
Full-year sales for 2018 were $7.3 billion, up $963 million, or 15 percent driven by growth in the Americas and EMEA. Approximately $507 million of revenue growth was related to acquisitions, and $83 million was related to the adoption of ASC 606. The Products and Systems Integration segment grew 13 percent driven by the Americas and EMEA. The Services and Software segment grew 20 percent with growth in all regions.
Motorola Business Outlook for 2019
In the first-quarter 2019, Motorola Solutions said it expects revenue growth of approximately 11 percent compared with the first quarter of 2018. The company expects non-GAAP earnings in the range of $1.11 to $1.16 per share.
For the full-year 2019, the company expects revenue growth of approximately 6 to 7 percent and non-GAAP earnings per share in the range of $7.55 to $7.70. This assumes current foreign exchange rates, approximately 175 million fully diluted shares and a 25 percent effective tax rate.
