Sun Microsystems Inc skidded to a loss of US$209 million in the latest quarter, dragged down by a big charge for job cuts and falling demand for servers and data-storage machines.
Still, Sun’s shares jumped 5 percent in extended trading because sales topped Wall Street’s tepid forecast.
The results illustrate the challenge facing Sun, in the throes of major layoffs, as it tries to overhaul its business during a recession that has damaged bigger and sturdier rivals. One of those rivals is IBM Corp, whose mainframe and server sales have suffered as corporations chop their technology budgets.
Sun said after the market closed on Tuesday that its loss amounted to US$0.28 per share in the latest quarter. In the comparable period a year earlier, Sun had a profit of US$260 million, US$0.31 per share.
The latest figures were weighed down by a US$222 million restructuring charge. Sun, the world’s fourth-largest server maker, revealed in November that it is cutting up to 6,000 of its 33,000 workers over the next year. The cuts will save the Santa Clara-based company up to US$800 million a year.
Without one-time charges, Sun said it earned US$0.15 per share.
The figure didn’t directly compare to analysts’ forecast for a loss of US$0.10 per share, because some analysts included charges that Sun excluded.
Sales fell nearly 11 percent in the latest quarter to US$3.22 billion. But that was slightly better than analyst estimates.
“While things were certainly on paper better than what Wall Street had forecast, I’d be hard pressed to try to say that the fundamentals are improving at Sun,” said Brent Bracelin, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
RSS