Posts for Ticker ‘Sun Microsystems’

Sun Micro Wants Deeper Virtualization (JAVA, CTXS, VMW)

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ:JAVA) has announced that it has entered into a stock purchase agreement to acquire Stuttgart, Germany-based innotek.  Sun is calling innotek the provider of the leading edge, open source virtualization software called "VirtualBox."  VirtualBox has had over 4 million downloads since January 2007.

As part of Sun Micro’s xVM portfolio, VirtualBox will have the support of Sun’s global development community, field resources and partners to make VirtualBox even more compelling to developers and end users, driving greater adoption across a broad set of communities.  This will also enable desktops or laptops to run Windows, Mac, Linus, or Solaris O/S side by side.

This is after Sun announced it would acquire MySQL last month.  Financial terms were not disclosed, although this is listed as "not material" to earnings.

Citrix Systems (NASDAQ: CTXS) saw a brief rally after it acquired XenSource for virtualization and we all know how the hotter-than-hot VMware (NYSE: VMW) IPO brought virtualization front and center in the investment community.

Jon C. Ogg
February 12, 2008

Posted on: February 12, 2008 – 11:19 am in Mergers and Buy Outs, Software, , , , , , , , , , ,

Sun Microsystems Trying The Ticker Change Trick (SUNW, JAVA)

Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ:SUNW) is willing to try just about anything to get its shares moving or at least thought of differently.  The company is CHANGING ITS STOCK SYMBOL….to "JAVA."  Yep, the lame stock ticker change. 

It will assume the stock ticker "JAVA" on NASDAQ on Monday, August 27, 2007.  The company notes how it is mostly tied to the Java brand and platform.  But here is the problem: it costs next to nothing to license Java anymore.  Its main revenues come from actual product sales that it claims run teh Java deployments, but those servers and storage systems run everything else too.

Maybe they will try a reverse stock split next, or maybe keep issuing the statement "We are well positioned for the years ahead."  After that, they could see if the other listed company with the ticker "FREE" would sell them the ticker.  This is a yawn of an event at best.

Jon C. Ogg
August 23, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at jonogg@247wallst.com; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

Posted on: August 23, 2007 – 12:20 pm in Shareholder Issues, Technology Companies, , ,

Sun Microsystems Must Love Cheap Component Prices (SUNW)

Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ:SUNW) posted earnings of $0.09 EPS GAAP and $3.835 Billion in revenues.  Estimates were $0.05 EPS and $3.84 Billion revenues, but the GAAP EPS also had soem charges in it.  We have no formal guidance so they are holding off until the conference call.  It even generated $564 million cash in the quarter and total gross margin as a percent of revenues for the fourth quarter was 47.2%.

What the company had going for it in general was cheaper component prices and a somewhat strengthening demand from corporate America for technology spending, but we’ll have to see if those are the reasons for the beat on EPS estimates.  Unfortunately, Sun Micro Systems has seen its shares roll over fairly hard since recent highs from earlier in the year.  Shares are way off the private equity investment highs from earlier this year and shares sold off 10% in recent days in a weak market.

In normal trading, Sun closed down 0.6% at $4.89.  Shares are actually up 9% at $5.31 in reaction in the after-hours trading session.  The chart on this one despite the after-hours pop is going to be hard to call with what looks a bit directionless no-man’s land patterns.

Jon C. Ogg
July 30, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at jonogg@247wallst.com; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

Posted on: July 30, 2007 – 3:11 pm in Earnings, PC Companies, Technology Companies, ,

Sun Microsystems: More Layoffs Appear Needed

When new CEO Jonathan Schwartz took over in June 2006, Sun Microsystems (SUNW-NASDAQ) announced an 11-13% workforce reduction, and many investors thought that Sun was serious about getting costs under control and returning to obvious, not maybe, profitability.  When the company first made the announcement they estimated that this, along with other cost-cutting measures, would save the company between $480 and $590 million by the fourth quarter of 2007 after charges. 

Based on the company’s latest quarterly report, total headcount (as of 12/31/06) stood at 34,600, down from 38,300 in March of last year, a 9.5% reduction.  Only about half of the drop was related to the planned reductions, with the remainder due to regular attrition that was simply not replaced. 

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Posted on: April 2, 2007 – 12:53 pm in Corporate Governance, Earnings, PC Companies, Semiconductor, Shareholder Issues, Technology Companies, , , ,