Sun Shapes Up For Q4

Sun, which is in the throes of a major restructuring effort, announced its preliminary fourth quarter results last night.

Despite the increasingly tough economic climate, Suns results were in line with analyst expectations, although the vendor’s revenues will be down on a year-over-year basis.

The vendor expects to report fourth quarter revenues in the range of $3.725 billion to $3.8 billion, in line with analyst estimates of $3.8 billion, but below the $3.835 billion Sun reported in the same period last year.

On a GAAP basis, the vendor expects earnings per share between 5 and 15 cents, compared to 9 cents per share in fourth quarter of 2007, although this includes a restructuring charge of around $100 million. On a non-GAAP basis, Sun expects to report net income per share between 25 and 35 cents, well within analysts’ expectations of 27 cents.

Sun, which announced up to 2,500 job losses on its third quarter earnings call, has not had the easiest time of it lately, rocked by the tough macroeconomic climate.Government and consumer-related industries, such as telecom, have proved the most problematic for Sun during recent months. Specifically in the third quarter, the vendor’s systems business took a hit, most notably in high-end tape libraries and high-end enterprise servers.

Sun, which has recently made a plethora of announcements around solid-state disk (SSD) and open storage, attempted to dispel any fears about the company’s future last night.

”In these difficult economic times, we continue to see customers across the world look to open software and hardware as a source of savings,” said Jonathan Schwartz, in a statement released last night. “[We] feel that Sun is well positioned with our most robust set of server, storage, service, and service offerings.”

There have even been rumors swirling around the media that Sun could be a potential acquisition target for another major vendor, with its server partner Fujitsu touted as a possible buyer.

Sun will release its results for fourth quarter and fiscal year 2008 on Aug. 1.Have a comment on this story? Please click "Discuss" below. If you'd like to contact Byte and Switch's editors directly, send us a message.