Super Micro fiscal Q2 sales not so super

Banking on Nehalem

By Timothy Prickett Morgan • Get more from this author

Posted in Hardware, 6th January 2009 23:46 GMT

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Motherboard and server maker Super Micro Computer said today it was not going to make its expected numbers for its fiscal second quarter ended December 31. The economic meltdown is the culprit - of course. But the good news is that Super Micro says that business picked up in December - just not enough to offset a bad November.

In a statement, Super Micro said that its sales in the second quarter of fiscal 2009 would be in the range of $127m to $129m, down pretty significantly from the company's guidance of between $140m to $150m. Non-GAAP earnings are now expected to range from 15 cents to 16 cents per share, down from the forecast of 18 cents to 22 cents a pop.

"The results for the second fiscal quarter reflect the severe economic contraction experienced since the financial crisis began in September," explained Charles Liang, chief executive officer at the company in a statement. "The overall economy impacted our customers during the quarter as they delayed buying decisions until they have better visibility. While we continued to experience strong demand in December, it was not enough of offset the slowdown experienced in November."

He added that Super Micro had launched a number of "low cost but high volume potential server solutions" in December to get further in to the "price sensitive small business and home office markets" and reminded everyone that it is ramping up in preparation of Intel's "Nehalem" Xeon processors, due at the end of March or so.

Super Micro will announce its financial results on January 28 and will provide guidance for the quarter ended March 31 at that time. This guidance will be interesting because it may provide some indication of how the Nehalem ramp is proceeding. It would not be a surprise that some server makers were getting orders in for Nehalem motherboards as the year ended, if they were available, thereby helping Super Micro's December. Nehalem boards made by Super Micro were certainly on display at the Supercomputing 2008 show last November. The boards are ready, even if Intel doesn't appear to be quite yet. ®

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