Sequent Computer Systems Inc is so pleased with a $59m order from Boeing Co for its NUMA-Q servers that it’s also trumpeting an expected 47% rise in second quarter revenue which it will report on Thursday. And, with its stock up $1.25 at a 52-week high of $25 on Monday the company has also decided it’s about time to cash in and sell 5.25m shares – including 1.05m unnamed shareholders are offloading – worth about $131m at that price, in a public offering of stock. It’ll use the money to fund growth. The deal with Boeing is a significant boost for Sequent’s NUMA interconnect technology and could be worth up to $105m through March 1998. Disk farms are being supplied by EMC Corp, tape libraries by Storage Technology Corp. Boeing is using the system – a 20-node configuration due to be installed at the US aircraft manufacturer by the end of this year will be upgraded to 35 four- node systems by the end of next year – to improve manufacturing. It’s reportedly converting 16 different data sources into an Oracle database. Sequent, which seems to be scoring a big hit with its NUMA-Q servers, even if they are more expensive that rival NUMA offerings from the likes of Data General Corp, says its second quarter earnings will be in the region of $7.5m to $8.5m – or up around $157% over the $3.3m it did in the same period last year – on revenue of between $205m and $210m, up around 47% on $142.6m. $36m of the Boeing order will be included in the second quarter numbers. Around 70% of the quarter’s revenue has come from NUMA-Q sales. Earnings per share will be between $0.20 and $0.23.
