* The LAN business is improving
From time to time I like to check in on how LAN switch companies are doing financially, and it just so happens that Enterasys Networks, Extreme Networks and Foundry Networks have all recently released earnings.
Enterasys closed its third quarter with a pre-tax loss of “only” $811,000, which isn’t bad when you consider the company lost $22.3 million before taxes last quarter and $8.2 million in the third quarter of last year. However, Enterasys got a fat IRS refund this quarter that pushed it into the profitable column, to the tune of $72.9 million.
Total revenue was down from the third quarter of last year, from $87.4 million to $81.8 million in the most recent quarter.
For Extreme, Oct. 2 marked the end of its fiscal first quarter, and its revenue was up 3% from the same quarter a year ago, to $97.9 million. Net income was $4.4 million.
Extreme noted that this was its seventh consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue growth, and announced that it would buy back up to $50 million of its common stock.
Interestingly, only 46% of Extreme’s revenue comes from inside the U.S., making the company very international in scope.
Meanwhile, Foundry’s third quarter brought in $107.1 million, up from $102.5 million in the same quarter last year. Net income was $16.3 million, up from a net loss of $3.6 million in the third quarter last year.
Foundry says the increase in revenue and profits is due to the company’s expansion of its product portfolio over the last several quarters. It singles out the BigIron RX, which has been the focal point for a couple recent issues of this newsletter.
