Restructuring costs pull Novell into the red

Novell Thursday reported unexpectedly strong operating profit and revenue for its fourth quarter, though restructuring expenses pulled the Waltham, Mass.-based company into the red.

Novell Inc. Thursday reported unexpectedly strong operating profit and revenue for its fourth quarter, though restructuring expenses pulled the Waltham, Mass.-based company into the red.

Novell also forecast first-quarter revenue of between $260 million and $270 million, with earnings per share of 2 to 3 cents. That excludes an estimated 3 cents per share from expensing stock options.

The company’s previously announced restructuring, which will involve layoffs of about 10 percent of its workforce, will hurt revenue by $40 million to $50 million for fiscal 2006.

For the just-finished quarter, Novell reported revenue of $320 million, up from $301 million in the prior year’s quarter, and a net loss of $5 million, or 1 cent per share. That compares with net income of $14.8 million, or 3 cents per share, in the same period last year.

Linux revenue was $61 million, including $46 million from sales of Open Enterprise Server, up 418 percent from the year-ago quarter. Sales of stand-alone subscriptions to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server totaled 64,000 in the quarter. Novell also took in $84 million from identity products.

For the entire year, Novell had sales of $1.2 billion, compared with $1.17 billion in the previous year.