Alcatel-Lucent on Wednesday said it took a $5.1 billion write-down that contributed to a $5 billion fourth-quarter loss, the troubled company’s eighth quarterly loss in a row.

The write-down, the largest ever taken by the Paris-based firm, is seen by some as an admission by the company that Alcatel overpaid for Lucent in 2006 when it plunked down $13.4 billion.

Company CEO Ben Verwaayen had a slightly different explanation.

“Everybody knows that we had deterioration in the market and a strategy change and that needed to be reflected in our balance sheet,” he said. (Alcatel-Lucent Taps Verwaayen as CEO)

Excluding the write-down the company met analysts’ profit targets, sending Alcatel-Lucent shares as high as 4 percent on Wednesday.

Fourth-quarter revenue was $6.4 billion, which represented a 5.3 percent decline from a year earlier. Revenue matched analysts’ forecast.

The company blames its sluggishness on the global recession and its customers’ preference to dig much more deeply into inventory rather than purchase new equipment

The company announced in December that it would cut costs related to its legacy wireline businesses and wireless technologies it views as either too mature or unprofitable such as CDMA and mobile WiMAX. (Alcatel-Lucent Wields Recovery Plan: Slash Away)

Alcatel-Lucent also announced then that it would shed 1,000 managers and 5,000 independent contractors.