"The Rise of JAVA - The Retirement of SUNW " WHAAAAAA
I stumbled upon Jonathan Schwartz’s blog that SUN is changing its ticker form SUNW to JAVA. I thought it was a joke, apparently not.
Jonathan Schwartz’s Weblog: The Rise of JAVA - The Retirement of SUNW
… Java swamps the number of people who know Sun. Or SUNW, the symbol under which Sun Microsystems, Inc. equity is traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange. SUNW certainly has some nostalgic value - it stands for “Stanford University Network Workstation,” and heralds back to Sun’s cherished roots (in academia). Granted, lots of folks on Wall Street know SUNW, given its status as among the most highly traded stocks in the world (the SUNW symbol shows up daily in the listings of most highly traded securities).
But SUNW represents the past, and its not without a nostalgic nod that we’ve decided to look ahead.
JAVA is a technology whose value is near infinite to the internet, and a brand that’s inseparably a part of Sun (and our profitability). And so next week, we’re going to embrace that reality by changing our trading symbol, from SUNW to JAVA. This is a big change for us, capitalizing on the extraordinary affinity our teams have invested to build, introducing Sun to new investors, developers and consumers. Most know Java, few know Sun - we can bring the two one step closer.
To be very clear, this isn’t about changing the company name or focus - we are Sun, we are a systems company, and we will always be a derivative of the students that created us, Stanford University Network is here to stay. But we are no longer simply a workstation company, nor a company whose products can be limited…
I guess I am not the only one that thinks this is a dumb idea as the comments to the post reveal.
Jonathan Schwartz was appointed CEO in May 2006. Here is a graph of Sun’s stock performance since then basically nothing much happened. I guess changing the ticker is the last resort when one runs of ideas. I hope they don’t get confused with JVA, Coffee Holding Co. Inc. - an integrated wholesale coffee roaster and dealer in the US.
Time to short the stock!
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