Cray has had a good start to the year with increased revenue reported for its first quarter. In addition the company has announced a new VP of sales in Asia Pacific, Nick Gorga.
Cray's reported revenue for the first quarter was $79.6 million, which compares with $55.1 million in the first quarter of 2014. The company reported a net loss for the quarter of $9.4 million, compared to a net loss of $12.9 million, in the prior year period.
However Cray's business model relies on large contracts and this has typically meant that first quarter earnings are not indicative of the entire year's performance. However they do give an indication as to Cray's performance year-on-year.
One particular focus for Cray has been expanding into new markets that it has not typically served in the past. 2014 saw the first system in Poland and a return to the Middle East, a market that Cray has not been involved in directly for nearly 20 years.
In his new position, Gorga joins Andrew Wyatt, Cray’s vice president of operations in the Asia Pacific region. Gorga will oversee Cray’s sales initiatives in the region and Wyatt is responsible for Cray’s service, corporate and management functions across the Asia-Pacific organisation.
‘The Asia Pacific region is an important piece of our international growth plans, and I am excited to have Nick representing Cray in our customer partnerships across the geography,’ said Peter Ungaro, president and CEO of Cray.
With a 32-year career in high-tech industries, including more than 22 years of high performance computing (HPC) sales experience, Gorga will be responsible for leading Cray’s sales efforts in Asia.
Ungaro continued: ‘This region contains some of the fastest growing and most diverse countries and customers in the world. Nick’s impressive background and proven experience will help customers gain strategic advantage in their business and research by leveraging our unique supercomputing, storage and analytics solutions.’
Because Cray’s business typically relies on the sale of large scale HPC systems, first quarter results have historically been slow with much of the revenue generated later in the year.
However 2014 was a particularly strong year for Cray as reported in Scientific Computing World last year.
In 2014, Cray had a total revenue of $561.6 million, some $30 million higher than the $525.7 million recorded in 2013. Net profit for 2014 was nearly double that of 2013 at $62.3 million, compared to $32.2 million. Although this was adjusted to take into account a $52.6 million tax benefit. Once the figures are adjusted for unusual and non-cash items, such as the tax allowance, the profit was $24.3 million.
At the end of 2014 Cray predicted revenue for 2015 to be in the range of $715 million, with about $80 million in the first quarter and roughly 40-45 per cent of the total year in the fourth quarter.
Actual revenue for the first quarter was $79.6 million,almost exactly what Cray had predicted in 2014, which compares with $55.1 million in the first quarter of 2014.
Much of this increase in revenue is due to a number of new contracts that the company won in 2014, including petroleum Geo-Services, which selected an XC40 and Cray storage to power its seismic imaging efforts.
The company also installed its first XC supercomputer in Poland at Stalprodukt, an advanced steel manufacturer.
The company also recently disclosed some details on its newest system code-named ‘Shasta,’ targeted for 2018.
A Shasta-based system was selected by Argonne National Laboratory along with Cray storage and an XC system for the Department of Energy’s CORAL project which is funding the national labs next three supercomputers, two based on IBM’s Open POWER and one new system from Cray.
Ungaro said: ‘We’re excited to be partnering with Intel to deliver these powerful new systems. This is a significant validation of our product roadmap as Shasta will deliver on our Adaptive Supercomputing vision to bridge the world of supercomputing with data analytics.’
If Cray can continue to match or even surpass the figures it produced in 2014 then it will be on course for a year of increased profits and potential growth.
