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Strategies & Market Trends : VOLTAIRE'S PORCH-MODERATED -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Murrey Walker who wrote (53969)	7/19/2002 2:38:11 PM
From: Dealer	Respond to of 65232

Sun Microsystems stock sinks 27% By Tom Foremski in San Francisco Sun Microsystems, a leading US computer company, said on Thursday it returned to modest profitability in its fourth quarter, but gave Wall Street a bleak outlook for an upturn in IT spending. Shares in the company dropped 27 per cent in midday trade on Friday to $4.23. Sun also said it was cutting an additional 1,000 jobs. ADVERTISEMENT Senior management said there were no signs of an upturn in stagnant global IT markets and it would continue to cut costs, including cutting 1,000 staff mostly through attrition. In addition to traditionally slow summer sales, it forecast a "small" loss in its current quarter. Sun is the leader in computer systems for corporations running the Unix operating system. It is reorganising operations to deal with sharply lower corporate IT spending and low levels of demand from corporations in financial services and telecommunications sectors. "IT markets continue to be soft and there are no signs of a change," said Steve McGowan, chief financial officer of Sun. He said that some cost savings because of lower hardware component costs had been wiped out by price cuts as the company sought to expand market share through a price war with competitors. In its fourth quarter Sun earned one cent a share compared with a loss of 3 cents a share a year ago, meeting Wall Street estimates. Fourth-quarter revenues of $3.4bn were down 15 per cent from the year-ago quarter. Revenues in 2002 were $12.45bn, 32 per cent below $18.25bn in 2001. Sun reported a net loss of $628m in 2002 compared with net income of $927m in 2001. Mr McGowan said Sun would not cut R&D expenditure, calling it very important to the company's future. Management said it could provide detailed guidance on its current quarter. It will host a mid-quarter conference to update financial analysts on market conditions.