Sun sticks by its financial guns

NEWS Sun's financial chief has renewed the company's pledge to push up revenues for this quarter and hit profitability by June. The company's third quarter concludes at the end of March and the server-maker is sticking by its previous guidance in which it predicted to overtake the $3.1bn in revenue generated last quarter. Sun has been on a downer for the past three periods turning in consecutive losses. It now hopes to turn this around by the end of June. In the aftermath of the dot-com blow-out, Sun lost ground on its biggest rivals, including IBM. However, it putting continuing weight behind its transition from UltraSparc II to UltraSparc III CPUs, and expects to see an increase in gross margins - an important measure of profitability. Sun's share price dipped by close overnight but edged back into the green by 3.6 per cent to reach $9.15 in after-hours trading.