Cray thanks Uncle Sam for juiced revenues
Supercomputer maker Cray pulled some big bucks from the US government in the fourth quarter, nearly tripling sales. But after writing down a few assets, the company posted a loss for the quarter - and for the year.
Cray booked $155.4m in sales in the fourth quarter, including $100m for a portion of the "Jaguar" petaflops supercomputer sold to Oak Ridge National Laboratory, one of the big centers run by the US Department of Energy.
That was nearly triple the $57.4m in sales Cray had in the fourth quarter of 2007. A $54.5m impairment charge in non-cash goodwill (because of the company's lower market capitalization) pushed the company to a $20.7m loss, compared to a $3.6m loss in the year-ago quarter.
For the full year, Cray had sales of $282.9m, up 51.9 per cent, and gross profits before the impairment charge came to $111.1m, the highest level Cray has seen since 2003. Cray's loss for all of 2008 came to $31.3m, significantly higher than the $5.7m loss it had for the 2007 year. Cray ended 2008 with $52.7m in net cash (cash and short-term investments minus convertible notes), more than double the cash it had at the end of the September quarter.
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