Third and increasing
Third and increasing
Joining the ranks of storage companies reporting healthy revenues for the last part of 2002 was Quantum. The storage vendor has reported that it increased its revenues by 12 per cent for the third fiscal quarter of the year.
Total revenue for the third quarter, which ended on December 29, 2002, was US$229 million, an increase of 12 per cent. A pro-forma profitability was also achieved a quarter earlier than expected, with a pro-forma net income of $4 million, which is three cents a diluted share. The figures include $15 million in revenue generated from Quantum's acquisition of Benchmark Storage Innovations. Quantum acquired Benchmark on November 13, 2002.
Net loss was reduced to $15 million or nine cents a share. Rick Belluzzo, the CEO of Quantum said of the results; "Despite continued weakness in IT spending and a number of aggressive changes we made during the quarter, Quantum stayed focused on execution. As a result, we made progress on our strategic priorities - strengthening our leadership in tape drives, growing our tape automation business."
Breaking down the results to the divisions of Quantum, the DLTtape group reported revenue of $173 million, which they say comprises of $92 million in tape drive revenue and $81 million in tape media revenue. Quantum said that tape drive shipments were up by 55 per cent and super drive shipments were up by 36 per cent over the September quarter. These figures include revenues form the DLT VS80, which was part of Quantum's haul from acquiring Benchmark. Quantum claims that end users are still showing "strong support" for the SDLT 320 product.
The Storage Solutions Group grew its revenue to $64 million and doubled its OEM sales since the September quarter. Tape automation revenue increased by 35 per cent. Quantum claimed "much of this growth" was from its new products such as the ATL P4000 and P7000 as well as the ATL M2500.
Despite the good results, Quantum said that it was still cautious. In a statement Mr Belluzzo said there is still an air of economic uncertainty around and that customers have "limited visibility." They expect the March quarter revenues to be flat, as well as the gross margins.
"The overall IT spending environment clearly remains a challenge, but data protection is expected to be among the top investment priorities as the economy improves," he said.
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