The Santa Clara-based company's results, released after the market closed, followed a rally fueled by investor optimism about the results.
Sun's stock rose $1.30, or nearly 9 percent, to $16.12. And in after-hours trading, it gained another 23 cents, rising to $16.35.
Shareholders' enthusiasm hasn't been enough to lift the stock price back up to the $20 range where it stood after Sun executed a 1-for-4 reverse stock split in November. The essentially cosmetic move was intended to shed the stigma of slumping shares.
Sun's net income leaped 95 percent, rising to $260 million, or 31 cents per share, for the three months ended Dec. 30. That was a penny higher than the average estimate of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial, and nearly twice as high as Sun's profit of $133 million, or 15 cents per share, during the same period a year earlier.
The profit came in at the high end of a range Sun had pre-announced during the quarter.
Sales during the latest quarter were $3.61 billion, slightly higher than the $3.59 billion Wall Street was expecting. They only inched up from the same period last year, when Sun registered $3.57 billion in sales.
Sun executives
The company is facing intensifying competition from rivals such as IBM Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. in the market for the servers that power corporate data centers and services to support them.
But Sun also broadened its strategy of partnering with one-time foes to increase the adoption of Sun products, a strategy that has worried some investors because of the potential to speed the adoption of rivals' products at Sun's expense.