Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Flair who wrote (6825)	1/16/1998 5:26:00 AM
From: Flair	Respond to of 64865

All, [News] Sun's Zander say surpassed IBM, HP as top server supplier. Reuters Story - January 15, 1998 17:26 "We believe that, ending the second quarter, we will establish ourselves as the number one company in Unix hardware, servers and storage, surpassing IBM and HP," Zander said, referring to International Business Machines Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co . Lehman said shipments of Starfire computers also exceeded 100 units in the quarter and the executives said Sun is working on increasing capacity by about 50 percent, or to around the 150 a quarter range. "We obviously aren't quite able to get to the higher, upper limits of our (Starfire) capacity yet, but that's why we're putting it in as fast as we can," Lehman said in an interview. Lehman said international sales offered encouragement, despite concern over economic turmoil in Asia and Sun's earlier failure to meet sales targets at the end of its first quarter, especially in Europe, Southeast Asia and Latin America. In the second quarter, he said currency rates dampened Sun's revenues by approximately 4 percentage points. But sales were up strongly in local currency terms in many countries, especially in Europe and the southern hemisphere. "We were very pleased with Europe," Lehman said. "Frankly a lot of our European company managers had been signalling to us that Q1 was not as bad as it looked." Sales in local currency terms jumped roughly 40 percent in Germany, 35 percent in France, 25 percent in Britain and nearly 40 percent in several Mediterranean countries, he said. Local currency sales grew more than 50 percent in the southern hemisphere and were up 35 percent from the year earlier period in China, Sun said. Even in Japan, a key market for Sun which has been sluggish at best, sales were up somewhat in local terms. "We did experience modest local currency growth in Japan," said Lehman, adding that Sun continues to be concerned about the macroeconomic situation. He said it was too early to tell whether the upturn in Europe will continue. Overall, Sun's gross margin was 52.2 percent, the highest level it has been for more than two years, despite the company's plans to continue making expenditures on research and development at "slightly higher" levels for new products. Sun CEO Scott McNealy said the company would continue to invest in promotional advertising to increase its brand recognition, including spots on the upcoming Superbowl. Analyst said the second quarter results, which topped consensus earnings estimates, and the call were upbeat. "Scott McNealy showed you don't need to be Intel to do well," said ABN AMRO Chicago Corp David Wu, noting Sun is aggressively attacking the market. "The only negative, frankly, is that the margins cannot go a lot higher." Sun reported that net bookings were up 19.1 percent from a year earlier to 2.57 billion and Lehman said expenditures for re-engineering the way it manufactures and delivers products will increase "a bit" in coming quarters before it subsides.