Telecoms equipment maker Lucent Technologies has forecast a return it to sales growth after a year of record losses and massive job cuts.

The company said its performance in the last three months of 2001 marked the "low point" in a sales downturn.

Revenues of $3.47bn (�2.43bn) over the quarter compared with $3.8bn in the same period last year, and $4.8bn between July and September.

But Lucent's chief financial officer, Frank D'Amelio, said that a lay-off programme and a wholesale restructuring should see the company back in the black once sales recover to $4.25bn a quarter.

The breakeven point before the restructuring was $4.75bn a quarter, he said.

Over the last three months of 2001 Lucent lost $757m once tax benefits and other items were accounted for, the firm said.

A year earlier the loss was �1.44bn

Without the benefits, the loss was $1.28bn, compared with $2.1bn in 2000.

From icon to basket case

Lucent has proved a flagship for the telecoms industry, and its woes are seen as an indicator of the health of the sector as a whole.

The firm's first incarnation was as Bell Labs, the technology arm of US communications behemoth Bell.

When Bell was split up in 1984, Bell Labs was hived off as a separate company.

During the boom years of the 1990s, Lucent was a success story.

But the slowdown in tech spending which began in early 2000 hit Lucent hard, and last year it sank into massive losses, prompting the firm to order the axing of more than 30,000 post amid a top-to-bottom restructuring.