Tech vendor Sun Microsystems squeezed back to profitability in its third fiscal quarter ending March 30th, despite reporting a 10.2 percent drop in revenues for the period.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun said its profit for the quarter was $4 million or zero cents per share, compared with a net loss of $37 million, or 1 cent per share, during the same time a year ago.
Revenues were $2.8 billion, down by 10.2 percent compared to the same quarter in 2002 when it took in $3.1 billion. During the prior quarter which ended Dec. 29th, 2002, revenues came in at $2.9 billion, off by 6 percent compared to the same, year-ago quarter.
The results helped Sun put some distance between this quarter and its prior quarter, in which it announced a loss of nearly $2.3 billion, about $2 billion of which it attributed to investment writedowns.
The company has been working its way through sluggish IT spending that followed the bursting of the dot-com bubble, but on Wednesday it said it was managing its costs while building out more productivity.
Sun’s Chairman, President, and CEO Scott McNealy noted the company’s strategic moves into entry-level systems, such its SPARC processor development and its utility and managed services. “We expanded the reach of the leading 64-bit operating system, launching Trusted Solaris for x86 and SPARC platforms, and announcing Project Orion,” Sun’s billing platform.
The company generated $379 million in cash flow during the quarter, marking the 34th quarter in a row with positive cash flow from operations.