San Jose, Calif. – Wall Street’s tepid reaction to Scott McNealy’s exit as chief executive of Sun Microsystems Inc. underscored a question on many investors’ minds: Can Jonathan Schwartz, the ex-chief’s ponytailed protégé and handpicked successor, reverse the company’s long slide?
The server and software maker’s stock closed just a penny higher, at $4.99 per share, on the Nasdaq Stock Market on Tuesday, a day after McNealy stepped down and Schwartz said he had no immediate plans to make drastic changes in Sun’s operations. Shares are off 95 percent from their $64 high reached in September 2000.
Sun, which has operations in Broomfield, purchased Storage Technology Corp. of Louisville last year for $4.1 billion. Sun employs about 4,700 people in Colorado.
McNealy, the 51-year-old maverick who has run Sun for 22 years, has frequently been at odds with financial analysts for his reluctance to reduce its engineer ranks, trim spending on research and development, and even lop off whole sections of the company.
The hope on Wall Street was that Schwartz, 40, might prompt Sun to finally make the painful cuts that have helped other companies, including Hewlett-Packard Co. and IBM Corp., return to profitability.
