Sun Posts $20M Profit

Sun Microsystems reported Thursday that it has climbed back into the black with a $20 million profit on $3.4 billion in revenue for its fourth fiscal quarter, ended June 30. The company, which posted a $37 million loss for the third quarter, beat its numbers from the fourth quarter of 2001, when it lost $88 million on $4.0 billion in revenue.

Sun achieved gains in the low-end server space through sales of its UltraSparc III processor-based products such as the Sun Fire V880 two-way, four-way, and eight-way servers and the Sun Fire 280R rack-mountable two-way server. The company also increased sales of its high-end UltraSparc III processor-based products such as the Sun Fire 6800 and Sun Fire 15K mainframe replacement servers.

For the full fiscal year, Sun lost $628 million on $12.5 billion in revenue. This was down sharply from fiscal 2001, when it had a profit of $927 million on $18.3 billion in revenue. Sun finished fiscal 2002 with a cash balance of $5.9 billion.