Still trying to swallow its Cray Research Inc acquisition and now also having to replace faulty R10000 chips in some of its computers, Silicon Graphics Inc turned in a first quarter net loss of $21.6m compared with a profit of $58.3m last time. The company warned a few weeks back that first quarter revenue would only be slightly ahead of the pro forma combined revenue of SGI and Cray in the same period last year (CI No 3,007), and so it turned out to be, with revenue at $765.5m, just a shade a head of the $758m pro forma number. An operating profit of $18m was swamped by $10m charges for the refit program, $21m for merger-related charges for the Cray acquisition, $18m accounting for the writing up of inventory and services, and $3m for other merger related expenses. The company claims a backlog of some $473m in orders, while SGI chairman and CEO Ed McCracken attributed much of the shortfall to customers delaying orders in anticipation of its new product lines announced a couple of weeks ago. The US accounted for 56% of revenue, Europe 23% and other regions 21%. 58% of sales were servers, 42% desktops. The New York Stock Exchange banned after-hours trading in SGI stock on the news, which came after the markets closed. SGI’s shares stood at $21.50, down $0.50 on the day. The 52-week range is $20-$38.75.
