SGI ‘just short’ of breaking even

Once-troubled SGI execs yesterday appeared to have cultivated sunnier dispositions when they revealed that the company will next week announce that it has broken even... almost. The official line phrase is "just short of break even", which could mean absolutely anything -- except, of course, 'in the black' and 'at break even point' -- but at least SGI is finally moving in the right direction. Company bosses said they expect to report revenues for the quarter of $640 million, down seven per cent on the $685 million figure it posted for the same period last year. For the previous quarter its first of fiscal 2000, the company lost $213 million, including restructuring charges, a massive increase on previous quarters' losses as SGI shut down all the operations it had failed to sell-off under its August restructuring programme. SGI could, of course, have chosen to spread out those charges over several quarters, but it presumably felt better to get them out of the way, to allow it to focus its efforts on cutting costs -- and, more importantly, to make it clear to Wall Street that that's what it's doing. SGI's latest results, for the quarter ended 31 December, will be officially released on 24 January. ®