Sun Microsystems posts $180 million loss

The company posted revenues of $2.86 billion, compared with $5.05 billion last year. Analysts were expecting $2.9 billion.

"The current economic environment is very difficult, but the strength of Sun's vision and strategy create a competitive advantage", Sun chief executive Scott McNealy said in a statement.

The results were released after the close of regular trading Thursday. In early trading Friday, shares of Sun were down 9 cents to $8.79 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

On October 5, the company announced 3900 job cuts and warned that its fiscal first-quarter earnings would fall short of expectations, then at a loss of 4 cents a share.

Company officials also blamed the September 11 terrorist attacks. "Our business nearly ground to a halt in the two weeks following that tragic day", Michael Lehman, Sun's chief financial officer, said during the October 5 conference call with analysts.

Analysts agreed the attacks affected Sun's business, but said there was trouble before then, too. The company posted record profits during the height of the Internet boom but has been hit hard by the death of dot-coms, reductions in corporate technology spending and the deflation of the telecommunications industry.

"The business had been weakening", stated Richard Chu, an analyst at SG Cowen Securities. He said Sun's latest release shed no new light on how much of its loss was attributable to the attacks. "It will become clearer as we get more data in from this current quarter", he said.

The Palo Alto, California-based company announced then it would not hold a conference call after its first-quarter earnings announcement. Sun is scheduled to hold another financial update in early December.

Sun, which designs its own chips and software for its machines, recently unveiled a Unix-based server that it hopes will lead the return to profitability. IBM announced a competing line the following week.