Sun sees sales drop by 25 per cent

Sun's revenue dropped by 25 per cent over the first quarter

Sun Microsystems saw its first quarter revenue drop and announced it will cut 10 per cent of its workforce due to delays in its sale to Oracle.

The revenue decrease of 25 per cent saw sales fall to $2.24bn (£1.33bn). Despite this, the company’s first-quarter loss of $120m (£71.5m) was less than the same period last year, due to much smaller exceptional charges, down from the $1.68bn reported a year ago.

The company’s results included $6m (£3.6m) for impairments and pre-tax charges of $45m (£26.8m) for restructuring. This compares with $1.45bn (£0.86bn) and $63m (£37.5m) respectively, a year earlier.

With most of its clients in the battered financial services sector, Sun reported a product revenue drop of 33 per cent, with services revenue down 14 per cent.

The completion of Sun’s acquisition by Oracle, announced in April, is still in progress. It is being held up by an EU anti-trust investigation cased by competition concerns over Oracle - the world's largest database supplier - taking over Sun's MySQL product, the most successful open-source database.

Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison has claimed that Sun is losing $100m (£61m) per month while European regulators ponder whether or not to approve the deal.

Oracle’s shares were among the most actively traded of Friday's late session, according to reports.