Smurfit-Stone Container Corporation's decision to sell its European packaging assets to Jefferson Smurfit Group has pushed the group into the red in the fourth quarter.

The Chicago-based firm reported a fourth quarter net loss of $15 million, or six cents per share, compared to net income of $14 million, or six cents per share, in the year-ago period.

But a provision for taxes on the disposition of its European business accounted for a loss of 16 cents per share. Smurfit-Stone also incurred a restructuring charge of four cents per share related to the permanent closure of a paper machine at one of its containerboard mills.

Excluding these two factors, the company would have reported net income of $34 million, or 14 cents per share, for the quarter, slightly ahead of consensus expectations.

The company warned, however, that it would be difficult to achieve fourth quarter operating profits levels in the first quarter.

For 2002 as a whole, Smurfit-Stone reported net income of $54 million, down from $66 million, a year earlier.The firm was 29 per cent owned by Jefferson Smurfit Group until last year. It has retained a number of Irish shareholders who acquired the shares when Smurfit spun off its interest as part of the leveraged buy-out of the group by Madison Dearborn.