Sun Microsystems Inc turned in impressive second quarter and first half figures, with turnover up 30% and profits soaring – see Company Results, alongside – but the shares still took a tumble, falling $1.25 at $35 in morning trading on Nasdaq, because on Tuesday, chief financial officer Michael Lehman said in an interview that the company’s revenues for fiscal 1995, which ends in June, will likely grow slightly less than 30% from the previous year. We set all time records for revenues, net income and earnings per share this quarter, Lehman said, as the company reported that it shipped more than 81,000 systems in the second quarter, an increase of 34% over year-ago levels. Turnover per employee exceeded $400,000 and gross margin per employee exceeded $165,000 for the first time. The company reports strong customer demand for the past three quarters, with second quarter orders of $1,422m up more than 18% compared with the year-ago quarter. The company at last seems to have put its server woes behind it and it reports particular strength in servers, high performance desktops and multiprocessing systems. During the quarter the SunSoft Inc software unit distributed 109,000 Solaris licences. In saying that Sun’s growth for the full fiscal year could be a little less than 30%, Lehman said that Sun continues to set as its target a compound annual growth rate of at least 15% for earnings per share over any three-year period.
