The slew of technology companies that reported earnings today, while not all rising to exceed the high bar of Wall Street's demanding expectations, at least confirm that the tech sector is selling its stuff like hot cakes, whether or not it has figured out how to make money.
Compaq stole the show early in the day, reporting a record US$6.5 billion in sales of personal computers in the third quarter, up 31 percent from last year. Sun Microsystems looked beyond its Java wars with Microsoft to weigh in with its own record $2.099 billion in revenues, up 13 percent from the same quarter a year ago.
Of course, it's not sales, but profits, that Wall Street cares about - and those numbers were not all as glowing. Despite its record revenues, Sun's profits dropped about 12 percent from the year-ago quarter's $123 million, to $108 million, after the company wrote off special charges, including the acquisition of Diba and Integrity Arts. Compaq managed to pull off a 42 percent profit hike - to $517 million this quarter, up from $365 million in the year-ago quarter.
Excite, with a 256 percent boost in revenues from the year-ago quarter, cut its losses from $9.4 million to $5.7 million. Reporting quarterly revenues of $14.4 million, up from $9.5 million in the preceding quarter and $4 million in the year-ago quarter, the Internet directory said its traffic was up 30 percent in September.
One exception to the swelling-revenues trend was Digital Equipment Corp., which turned its $66 million net loss a year ago into a $25 million profit this year. The computer-maker reported product sales of $1.582 billion, up just 4 percent from the year-ago quarter, while service revenues stayed nearly flat, just under $1.38 billion.
