By Eva Dou 

TAIPEI-- Acer Inc., the world's fourth-largest personal computer maker, said Friday that sliding sales and a write-off of raw-materials inventory led it to its third consecutive full-year net loss, making it the hardest hit player in the sluggish PC sector.

The Taiwanese PC maker has been upended in recent months by the abrupt departure of two chief executives in succession, who both failed to stem the company's slide. Acer's founder, Stan Shih, has returned as acting chairman and is trying to revive the former laptop leader by turning it toward cloud-computing services.

A new chief executive, Jason Chen, took the helm this month, but has so far offered few concrete details of how he plans to turn around Acer's fortunes.

Acer said Friday its fourth-quarter net loss was NT$7.63 billion, more than double the NT$3.69 billion expected by analysts. Revenue slid 14.6% to NT$86.70 billion from a year earlier, as Acer lost ground to rivals including Lenovo Group Ltd. and Asustek Computer Inc. who have pushed more aggressively into new sectors such as tablets and tablet-laptop hybrids.

Acer's senior executives are taking a 30% voluntary salary cut starting January, the company said in a statement.

In a sign of the company's struggles, it was the second consecutive quarter that Acer released its earnings in the evening with less than two hours prior notice. Taiwanese PC makers traditionally issue their fourth-quarter earnings during business hours at investor conferences in March.

Analysts say that Acer relied too heavily on making low-end laptops, which weakened its brand, while also failing to move quickly enough into the new mobile sector when it started eating away at traditional PC sales. While Acer is trying to transform its business model to a more service-oriented one, analysts caution that it is far from an easy fix.

"There's no way Acer will break even in the first half of this year," said Daiwa analyst Steven Tseng. "They can maybe break even in the second half. Right now their hardware business is in trouble and they can only push through volume with more aggressive pricing."

Acer's global PC market share slid to 7.8% in the fourth quarter from 10.1% a year earlier, while those of Lenovo, Asustek and Hewlett-Packard Co. climbed, according to market research firm IDC.

Write to Eva Dou at eva.dou@wsj.com

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