SAN FRANCISCO – Network computer maker Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW) Tuesday posted a quarterly profit, helped by its settlement with Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), as revenue rose for the first time in 13 quarters.
Including that gain and other items, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company posted net income for its fourth fiscal quarter ended June 30 of $795 million, or 24 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier net loss of $1.04 billion, or 32 cents per share, which included charges.
Revenue rose 4.3 percent to $3.11 billion from $2.98 billion.
Excluding the settlement income of $1.60 billion and $350 million in deferred other income related to the settlement, as well as other items, Sun said it had a loss of $169 million, or 5 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier profit before items of $24 million, or 1 cent a share.
On that basis, analysts had forecast the company to post a loss, on average, of 4 cents a share, within a range of a loss of 7 cents to a profit of 1 cent, according to Reuters Estimates. Revenue was pegged at $2.92 billion.
Sun Micro Chief Financial Officer Steve McGowan said in a statement that the company saw consistent demand throughout the quarter across geographic areas and products.
The company also said that it enjoyed server unit volume growth of 46 percent compared with a year earlier and of 18 percent compared with the prior quarter.
In April, Sun and Microsoft settled their bitter antitrust battles and Microsoft agreed to pay $2 billion to Sun, which has been hit harder than its rivals since the dot-com and telecommunications bubbles burst in 2000.
It has been hurt by International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) at the high end of the server market and by the rising popularity of the freely available Linux operating system, which has been making gains against Sun servers using its Solaris version of the Unix (search) operating system.
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