The Black Box

[hardcore]

Sun's backlog "highest in years"

http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/060124/sunmicrosystems_earns.html?.v=5



......... Sun Microsystems said it had a net loss of $223 million, or 7 cents per share in its fiscal second quarter ended in December, compared with a year-ago net profit of $4 million, or nil per share. Revenue rose 17 percent to $3.34 billion from $2.84 billion, helped Sun's acquisition of Storage Technology Corp.

Excluding items, Sun had a loss of 1 cent per share. On that basis, analysts had expected a profit of 1 cent per share, on average, within a range of a loss of 2 cents per share to a profit of 4 cents per share. Revenue was pegged at $3.50 billion.

Sun has struggled since the bust of the dot-com and telecommunications investment bubbles five years ago and amid the rising popularity of servers using the Linux and Windows operating systems. It has also lost market share to rivals including Dell Inc. (NasdaqNM:DELL - News) and International Business Machines Corp (NYSE:IBM - News).

Revenue from the sale of its computer servers, workstations, data storage and other hardware rose 14.5 percent to $2.11 billion. Revenue from its services arm rose 22.7 percent to $1.23 billion from $1 billion.

Scott McNealy, Sun's chief executive officer, said in a statement that the Santa Clara, California-based company's backlog is "the highest in years." Sun has been rolling out new products in the last year or so, and McNealy has said that Sun now has the strongest line-up of products in its history.

"We are definitely seeing an uptick in demand," Sun President and Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Schwartz, referring to new Sun products such as its Galaxy servers said on the conference call for investors that followed the company's earnings release.........