There wasn't anything in the quarter in any product area that the company did not shine on.
Sun's stock has already taken huge blows, is one of the better names in our group and should ultimately benefit from a strong product cycle and an expanding solutions approach, ... For now, however, we think the economic cycle probably has the upper hand.
Sun's intra-quarter call confirmed the fairly grim picture of demand that we have been seeing,
We have it ( IBM ) as a recommended list rating because, ironically, this currency change comes at a time when the fundamental picture is actually perhaps a little bit better than what we had been expecting,
reported a strong, high-quality quarter, with substantial upward revisions to both top and bottom lines.
The likelihood of Dell hitting the high end of its 6 percent to 9 percent (revenue growth) target, which many investors, ourselves included, initially thought was an easy target to beat, is now much lower.
His answer was a crisp articulation of why they chose to slow down growth.
For the most part, Sun has tried to tone down some of those public statements and actions of that ilk. In general, Sun has taken more of a statesman-like position. As to whether they would do something like this or not, I have no idea.
Over the last couple of quarters, very few companies have felt the combination of externally induced slowing amplified by some internal miscues the way Sun has.
While our checks suggest that there was a general pickup in hardware business at the end of the March quarter, this was probably not sufficient for IBM to make our original revenue forecasts.
