Merrill downgrade clouds Sun
by Michelle Rushlo
February 21, 2001
upside.com
Sun Microsystems' (SUNW: -2.12, 20.12) stock slid 10 percent at the opening bell today on a downgrade from Merrill Lynch.
Analyst Thomas Kraemer downgraded the stock from "accumulate" to "neutral" and trimmed his 2001 earnings per share estimate from 68 cents to 65 cents.
In his research notes, Kraemer said softness in the economy appears to be accelerating and raises the likelihood that the server maker will have to reduce its projections again.
Inventory is at a three-year high, Kraemer said, and more used equipment from dead dotcoms is coming. He also said that other enterprises already have enough equipment because they purchased aggressively prior to the slowdown.
"It may take three quarters to burn through this and new Ultra Sparc III based servers just exacerbate the price cuts needed to move [existing] inventories," he wrote.
Missed opportunity
Kraemer said the Unix server leader seems to have missed the opportunity to capitalize on the fast-paced growth in the storage market, and it risks losing account control as storage vendors gain influence.
Many industry watchers have said that data storage is among the best insulated information technology products in the current economic slide.
Sun has announced the purchase of two storage software companies, LSC and HighGround Systems, since December and it has introduced several network-attached storage products but remains behind powerful storage players like EMC (EMC: -3.22, 46.05) and Network Appliance (NTAP: +0.12, 33.75).
"We continue to like Sun's server position, but we think storage matters more," Kraemer said. |
