Spring Quarter Results: Sun Vague, Intel Pale

In the past three months, Oracle's acquisition Sun lost over one billion dollars in revenue. The spring of 2008 had stood at $3.8 billion, while the figure for 2009 was $2.6 billion. The loss was about 10 cents per share, with the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) adjusting the loss to 30 cents per share. Sun's preliminary quarterly report falls short because the company wants to migrate its results into the annual report in August, their fiscal year having ended June 30. It will be interesting to see how the hardware sales figures, which were already down in the last quarter, have developed, and that their hopes for open source as a growth engine aren't being dashed.

Intel has provided its second quarter results of their fiscal year running January through December. Their revenue grew around $800 million since the first quarter to eight billion dollars. The chipmaker celebrates that this is their strongest growth factor from a first to second quarter since 1988, as loosely quoted from CEO Paul Otellini. What he didn't emphasize was that the second quarter figures are still $1.5 million less than that of a year ago. The loss is still only in the millions range when GAAP rules are applied. Before GAAP, with certain amortizations and income from corporate capital investments figured in, Intel actually gained a million dollars. Before GAAP, earnings per share gained 18 cents; after GAAP, the loss was seven cents.

The chipmaker attributes its pale quarterly results partly to its investment in new technologies and ideas. Early June, Intel bought embedded Linux specialist Wind River. Early April, it invested in the automotive industry by promoting the Moblin open source platform.