Storage firm Quantum Corp. reported another quarter of losses Tuesday, while Storage Technology Corp. had another quarter of growth, officials of those companies said.
Quantum, which makes tape products and disk-based backup appliances, earned $202 million for its first quarter of 2003, but wound up losing $9 million overall. Quantum made $211 million and lost $131 million a year ago, and made $235 million while losing $5 million in its prior quarter.
Chairman and CEO Rick Belluzzo, in Milpitas, Calif., attributed the performance to lower-than-expected sales of media and drives. “Over the last year, we have been working to execute an aggressive plan to return Quantum to a position of sustained growth and profitability,” he said. “We have improved many of the fundamentals underlying our business. … We will continue to focus intensely on improving our performance.”
Quantum expects flat to mild growth in the second quarter, officials said. Separately, the company this week announced a new product, DLTSage, a tape diagnostic tool.
At StorageTek, of Louisville, Colo., income for the second quarter of 2003 came in at $30.1 million, on $527.3 million in revenue. Thats up from the prior quarter, which saw $16.5 million in profit with $480 million of revenue, and from a year agos figures of $19.1 million in profit on $491.9 million of revenue.
“We had a strong quarter in all sectors of our business,” said Patrick Martin, chairman, president and CEO. “We executed well in storage services and in online solutions, and we gained market share in our automated tape solutions.”
Also, “our storage services business continues to be key for us. We continue to see a lot of opportunity in the services area both in the traditional maintenance as well as the professional services and consulting,” Martin said. StorageTek has a cash balance of $806 million, officials said.
Neither company provided an update on their patent lawsuit against each other.