Sun Microsystems revenue drops by nearly a third

Oracle takeover of Sun - shareholders vote tomorrow

Server and software vendor Sun Microsystems has announced what could be its last ever set of financial results before a shareholder vote tomorrow that is likely to see the supplier swallowed up by Oracle.

Sun's fourth quarter revenue for 2009 will fall in the range $2.58bn-$2.68bn (£1.58bn-£1.64bn), some 29 to 32 per cent down over the 2008 figure of $3.78bn (£2.3bn).

Sun said it would not be hosting a conference call on the results but there will be a special meeting of stockholders to vote on its takeover by Oracle at 10:00am US Pacific time on 16 July.

The proposal to agree the merger has to be "by the affirmative vote of a majority of the outstanding shares of Sun's common stock as of the record date, " said Sun in a further statement.

Oracle and Sun announced the acquisition agreement on 20 April with the transaction valued at approximately $7.4bn, or $5.6bn after Sun's cash and debt is taken out.

The statement on Sun's web site said: "Oracle plans to engineer and deliver an integrated system - applications to disk - where all the pieces fit and work together so customers do not have to do it themselves."

However, a recent extension to the US Department of Justice (DoJ) 30-day review of Oracle's proposed takeover could lengthen the process. The DoJ has stated that it wants to look deeper into how the acquisition affects the licensing rights to Sun's Java software.