Six months ago, shares of Brocade Communications Systems
It didn't work. Brocade fell 9% right away.
Apparently figuring that it was just bad luck, Brocade is trying that trick again. Last night's "Fiscal Q3 Results" release was accompanied by the much snappier "Brocade Demonstrates Technology Innovation and Industry Leadership in Q3 FY2010." But it doesn't matter if you put lipstick and a pink tutu on the pig -- it still stinks.
Brocade's sales grew a piddly 2% year over year, to $504 million, and non-GAAP earnings per share increased by 8%, to $0.13. CEO Michael Klayko put a positive twist on this: "Q3 was another solid quarter for Brocade in which we achieved better-than-expected results from our storage area networking business and continued to make progress in our Ethernet go-to-market initiatives."
That's a severe disappointment in an era when Cisco Systems
If there's an upside to Brocade's bad news, you won't find it in the spin-heavy management notes. Trailing earnings did improve while the market cap didn't, so now the company looks cheap enough to become real buyout bait. I've already noted that Dell
I'm casting an "outperform" vote on Brocade in CAPS right now; not because it's a great stand-alone business, but because there are hungry sharks in the water.