NEW YORK, (Reuters) -- Global Crossing Ltd. , the No. 5 US long-distance telephone company, said Friday its fourth-quarter loss more than tripled due to costs to expand its undersea fibre-optic networks and absorb recent acquisitions.

Shares of Hamilton, Bermuda-based Global Crossing fell nearly 15 percent in heavy Nasdaq trading. Several factors pressured the stock, such as slow fourth-quarter revenue growth, the complexity of the financial statements, and the company's plan to change the accounting treatment of some revenues, analysts said.

Global Crossing's stock hit an intraday low of 51, but recovered somewhat to trade at 51-3/8, down 9-11/16, as more than 20 million shares changed hands.

Global Crossing said its pro forma, fourth-quarter loss, adjusted for recent acquisitions, was $184 million, or 24 cents a share, compared with $54 million, or 7 cents a share, a year ago.

Its reported recurring loss was 20 cents a share, or better than the 22 cents a share loss expected by Wall Street analysts, the company said.

Global Crossing is building undersea and international fibre-optic communications networks. It sells capacity on those networks to other telecommunications service providers and large corporations.

Pro forma revenues rose about six percent to $1.113 billion from $1.052 billion. The fourth-quarter revenue growth fell short of some analysts' expectations and below the nearly 14 percent revenue growth for the year.

Sales to consumers fell, but sales of communications services to other carriers and large corporations rose. Web hosting sales soared 196 percent.

The results "demonstrate the rapid pace at which we continue to expand our global communications network and telecom service offerings,'' said Global Crossing Chief Executive Bob Annunziata.

The company said it will change its accounting practices for sales of some undersea network capacity. It will now spread those revenues over the lifetime of the contracts, rather than realise all the revenues at the beginning of the contracts.

While the company still will see the same total revenue from its contracts, those revenues will be spread out over a longer time. As a result, revenues reported in 2000 will be lower than originally expected. None of the accounting changes will affect the company's cash flow.

"It will have a neutral impact on cash flow and adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation), but nonetheless people may be a bit nervous about how the market will perceive the lower reported revenue,'' said Lazard Freres & Co analyst Matthew Janiga.

Global Crossing has expanded aggressively through acquisitions and joint ventures and it expects to forge more deals in the future.

The company last year acquired long-distance telephone company Frontier Corp.; Global Marine Systems, a cable installation and maintenance company; and Racal Telecom, the telecommunications arm of Britain's Racal Electronics Plc .

Over the past year, it has grown from 148 employees to more than 12,000 and expanded the number of major cities reached by its network from two to more than 200.

Global Crossing Chief Financial Officer Dan Cohrs said in an interview the company would be open to other acquisitions, but any future deals would likely be smaller than its $9 billion acquisition of Frontier.

Global Crossing would look for deals that would help it gain corporate customers, sales staff and more data capabilities, but it would not want to acquire more network assets, Cohrs said.

The company also has been focusing on building its data and GlobalCentre Web-hosting business, which offers storage and maintenance facilities for Web sites and other Internet services such as applications management.

Global Crossing plans to launch an initial public offering for less than 20 percent of GlobalCentre, Cohrs said.