NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The Chicago Cubs aren't the only underdog from Illinois that is experiencing a resurgence lately.

Motorola, based in Schaumburg, hit Wall Street's equivalent of a monstrous Waveland Avenue-landing Sammy Sosa home run Monday morning with a better-than-expected earnings report.

The telecom equipment and semiconductor company decided to release third-quarter results a day and a half earlier than scheduled, following a debt downgrade by credit rating agency Moody's late Friday.

Despite that bad news, shares of Motorola (MOT: Research, Estimates) were slightly higher Monday, continuing a solid run that started when CEO Chris Galvin announced last month that he would be resigning once a successor is found. Shares have surged more than 25 percent since Galvin said he would be stepping down due to differences with the board about the company's strategy.

Under Galvin, Motorola was often maligned by Wall Street for making promises that it could not deliver. But the company appears to be preparing for life without him and Wall Street is showing its approval.

Last week, Motorola announced that it was looking to shed its unprofitable semiconductor unit, a move that investors cheered, since the chip business is one that requires a lot of capital investment and is highly cyclical. Motorola has yet to give specific details about the terms of a timing of an IPO.

However, there was encouraging news about Motorola's chip business in Monday's report. Semiconductor orders increased 8 percent from a year ago and sales were up about 10 percent from the second quarter. Ren Zamora, an analyst with Loop Capital Markets, said he is expecting flat revenue growth in the chip business.

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Motorola's personal communications business, which accounts for about 43 percent of total sales, showed some signs of strength as well. Cell phone sales increased 8 percent from a year ago and orders surged 44 percent.

That, in particular, bodes well for the crucial fourth quarter, which tends to be the one when cell phone companies introduce many of their new models for the holiday shopping season. Motorola has lost market share to industry leader Nokia in recent years, but the blockbuster order number raised hopes that Motorola may have at last regained an edge against Nokia.

"The company is finally starting to come out with better-selling products and is starting to take the lead again with innovative cell phones," said Carl Marker, manager of the IMS Strategic Income fund, which owns shares of Motorola Equity Security Units (MEU: Research, Estimates), preferred bonds that will convert to common stock in November 2004.

Still, while it's clear that Motorola finally has some 'mo, whether that continues will depend on how the company addresses some key questions about its long-term health. And the company's conference call with analysts raised more questions.

For one, Motorola downplayed the strong cell phone order figure. Motorola CFO David Devonshire said during the call that starting in the fourth quarter, Motorola will no longer provide order numbers by business segment since it believes that it is not an appropriate measure of future sales.

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In addition, there still are concerns about pricing pressures in the cell phone industry. To that end, Motorola reported that cell phone shipments rose 19 percent in the third quarter. But the unit's sales rose only 8 percent. That seems to confirm fears sparked by Nokia in September, when it warned that average selling prices (ASPs) of phones were declining.

During the call, Motorola president and COO Mike Zafirovski said that cell phone sales would be flat to 5 percent higher in the fourth quarter compared with a year ago and that ASPs should rise sequentially due to new product introductions. However, for the full year prices would be about 6 percent lower than 2002, Zafirovski said.

T. Michael Walkley, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, said that for now, cell phone companies appear to be compensating for lower prices with higher-than-expected volume. But over the long haul, if ASPs don't pick up, that will have a negative impact on profit margins.

Investors also want to hear more detail about the semiconductor IPO, particularly how much of Motorola's debt load will be pawned off on it. However, the company said during its conference call that it will provide no further information about the spin-off plans until it files the necessary paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Motorola reported that it had about $8.4 billion in debt on its balance sheet as of the end of the third quarter. Zamora said that the Moody's downgrade likely will lead to higher interest expenses on that debt as well as make it more expensive for Motorola to further tap the credit markets.

Finally, there's the question of who will take over for Galvin. Walkley thinks that Motorola may resist the urge to tap an outsider and could promote Zafirovski to the top spot.

But given all the issues that Motorola has on its plate right now, it might be difficult for the company to avoid disappointing Wall Street in the near future.

"Motorola is a company trying to achieve a lot of goals simultaneously," said Barry Randall, manager of the First American Technology fund. "There are so many moving parts and it's eerily reminiscent of Hewlett-Packard a few months ago, asking investors to be patient."

Randall said he sold his stake in Motorola about two months ago and adds that nothing has happened in the past few weeks to make him want to purchase the stock again.  

Analysts quoted in this story do not own shares of Motorola and their firms have no investment banking relationships with the company.