RCA Corrects Per-Share Data

RCA said Thursday that a “computational error” was responsible for a misstatement last week of its fully diluted per-share earnings for the third quarter and first nine months of 1985.

A spokesman, Charles Smith, declined to explain how RCA accountants had slipped up. “When you’re dealing with figures and numbers, it can easily happen,” he said. “I’m sure it’s happened to Shell and IBM.”

The New York entertainment and electronics concern said its per-share income for the quarter ended Sept. 30 was really 96 cents, not the $1.07 that it reported earlier. Per-share earnings for the nine-month period were $2.81, not $3.

All of the other figures were correct as reported, RCA said. The company earned $93.9 million on sales of $2.18 billion in the quarter, compared to net income of $78 million on sales of $2.07 billion in the like period of 1984.

Donna Hostetler, research director with Crowell, Weedon, a Los Angeles brokerage, said such errors are “very rare.” But she added that most analysts had probably caught the goof last week when the company’s earnings were reported.