Cray posts fourth-quarter profit
Cray's net income matches analyst expectations, and the company says it's delivered six of its top-end X1 supercomputers.
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The company posted a revenue of $39 million, compared with $26 million in the same quarter a year ago. Revenue for the full year was $155 million, compared with $134 million for 2001. The supercomputer maker projected a 2003 revenue of at least $200 million.
The net income matched expectations of analysts surveyed by First Call. The profit compared with a net loss of $17.3 million for the year-ago quarter.
Cray said that in 2002 it shipped five "early production" versions of its new X1 supercomputers and one full production version, which runs faster.
In November, Spain's National Institute of Meteorology placed an $8.5 million X1 order, and in December, the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center placed a $16.4 million order for an X1 and accompanying services. Last week, Cray said the Army High Performance Computing Research Center ordered an X1 for $15 million.
The company said manufacturing expenses for the X1 line should decrease in the second half of 2003.
Also in 2002, Cray signed a $90 million deal to build an Advanced Micro Devices Opteron processor-based supercomputer called "Red Storm" at Sandia National Laboratories.
Cray competes with mainstream computer makers IBM, Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard, as well as high-end computer specialist SGI. In addition, companies such as Linux Networx are building supercomputers out of large numbers of small Linux computers--a design similar to Cray's Red Storm system.