A Small Storage Company Purges Its IPO Demons
For many companies, completing an initial public offering is the fulfillment of an entrepreneurial dream. For storage maker Isilon Systems (ISLN), an IPO was the start of a nightmare.
The Seattle-based company got closer to righting itself after a rough few years on Thursday by eking out a modest profit, the first in the company’s history. Isilon, which makes storage hardware and software used in such data-heavy projects as the production of “Avatar” and the Olympics, said it earned a profit of $140,000 on revenue of $37.5 million for the quarter ending Dec. 31, compared to a loss of $4.3 million on revenue of $31.8 million in the year-earlier period.
The figures are another sign that businesses are slowly starting to spend again on information technology, even with some smaller companies like Isilon.