Quantum Continues Losing Streak

Despite the storage industry's recent fiscal upswing, Quantum Corp. Thursday announced a loss of $38 million for its second quarter of 2004 on revenues of $195 million.

Despite the storage industrys recent fiscal upswing, Quantum Corp. Thursday announced a loss of $38 million for its second quarter of 2004 on revenues of $195 million.

The results are the San Jose, Calif. storage companys worst since the year-ago quarter, which saw revenue of $204 million and a loss of $111 million. Quantum has not made a profit since earning $592,000 on $284 million in its third quarter of fiscal 2002.

"While clearly a disappointing setback ... bottom line, Im pleased with what we have accomplished in many areas but not satisfied with the results," said Rick Belluzzo, chairman and CEO, in a conference call.

Resource Library:

"We have pursued a number of aggressive changes over the past year that have resulted in some significant improvements in our business, including increased market share, higher product gross margins, lower operating expenses and a range of exciting new products," he said, in a prepared statement.

A significant problem was tape media pricing, he said, adding that is a problem industry-wide.

Quantums tape business made up $135 million of the quarters revenue, with libraries and disk-based backup product contributing $65 million.

Quantum hopes to fix its situation with products like the new Super Digital Linear Tape 600 drive and the DX100 disk-based backup appliance, both available this quarter, Belluzzo said. Analysts, customers, and the media will be briefed on the companys roadmap within the next 30 days.

But next quarters revenue will probably be flat, he said. Quantum has $273 million in cash and investments.

Discuss this in the eWEEK forum.

Reader Comments: Quantum Continues Losing Streak >>> Be the FIRST to comment on this article!

>>> More Data Storage, Data Backup and Storage Virtualization Articles          >>> More By eWEEK