Somehow, Some Way, Sun Beats… Sort Of (JAVA)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ:JAVA) just posted a wide loss for the quarter.  Like that was  a hard guess.  The company posted a 10% drop in revenues to $3.22 billion, and it claims gross margins even after a 6.6-point drop were 41.9%.  First Call had revenue expectations of $3.16 billion in revenues.

The loss was $209 million on a GAAP basis and it posted positivenon-GAAP earnings at $0.15 EPS.  First Call had those estimates at-$0.10 EPS.

The company ended the quarter with a hair over $3 billion in cash and equivalents.  But it did not give any formal guidance in its report.  Schwartz and friends eitherwant to maintain analyst relevance by making everyone listen to thecall, or it is adopting the no-guidance stance we are starting to seemore and more.

Shares closed up over 5% at $3.99 today, and what is amazing is theafter-0hours reaction.  Shares are up close to $4.30 in the initialreaction.  Until the company gives guidance or says it won’t offerguidance, you might want to consider this a highly incomplete set ofdata.

Jon C. Ogg
January 27, 2009

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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