Q2 FY 2009

The results for the last quarter were published yesterday. It isn´t nice, but better than everyone expected. And under the current economic circumstances this i think of it as a good result. The revenue of the last quarter was $3.220 billion, a decrease of 10.9 percent as compared with $3.615 billion a year ago. But you have to take into consideration that Q2FY2008 was one of the last quarters, before the economic world just gone downhill to it´s actual crisis. Compared to last quarter, Sun managed to increase the revenue by 7.7 percent.

Net loss for the second quarter of fiscal 2009 on a GAAP basis was $209 million, or $(0.28) per share on a diluted basis, as compared with a net income of $260 million, or $0.31 per share, for the second quarter of fiscal 2008, and compared with a net loss of $1.677 billion, or $(2.24) per share, for the first quarter of fiscal 2009.

The loss includes charges as large as $222 for the announced restructuring. As bad as the reductions are, i have to assume it´s the right decision for such economic circumstances like now. Well. The cash-flow of operational business is still positive and the Sun has still plenty of money to weather the current economic climate:

Sun ended the quarter with a cash and marketable debt securities balance of $3.008 billion and generated cash flow from operations for the second quarter of fiscal 2009 of $36 million.

Several other figures were positive as well: CMT up 31 percent year over year, Software 21 percent up YoY, x86 year over year, Open Storage up 21 percent year over year. Especially the last number is excellent, as we announced the Sun Storage 7000 line in the middle of this quarter ... i assume, the effect of this systems will give us even higher increases in the next quarters, but that´s an personal opinion (albeit a pretty obvious one from my perspective).

PS: It looks like i´m not the only one, who thinks about this result as a positive development. In After Hour trading the stock jumped to $4.26 ...