Maxtor shipments surge

Efficiency was the name of the Q4 game at Maxtor, with the disk-drive vendor grinding out an improved set of results on the back of improved inventory turns,and "better utilisation of assets". Shipments, up 23 per cent at 5.3 million units compared with Q4 1997, obviously did the company no harm either. This represents another logistics triumph, according to Maxtor CEO Mike Cannon. "We maintained our time-to-volume leadership with our 4.3 GB/disk products and are in the midst of the fastest product ramp in Maxtor's history with these drives," he said in a statement. The company reported net income of $30 million on sales of $728 million of Q4, stacking up nicely on Q4 1997 sales of $489 million and net income of $3 million. Sales for the full year were $2.4 billion and net income was $31 million (1997:sales $1.4 billion, losses $130 million).®: