3Com Corp. Chief Executive Officer Robert Y.L. Mao told analysts in June that his company was “headed in the right directions” after posting higher gross revenues and integrating its worldwide operations in the last fiscal quarter of 2008.

Yesterday the company announced that it had posted a profit for the first quarter of fiscal 2009, the first since 2000, helped by sales in China and a $70 million patent settlement.

For the quarter ended Aug. 29, the company had net income of $79.8 million, or 20 cents per diluted share, compared with a net loss of $18.7 million, or 5 cents per share, in the same quarter of 2008. 

“This was an excellent quarter for 3Com as we achieved profitability,” Mr. Mao told analysts during a conference call after the earnings were released yesterday. “These results exceeded our revised guidance for the quarter, and showed several examples of improved execution of our strategy and the benefit of efficiencies gained from our integration activities.”

During the quarter, the company saw a $70 million benefit from the previously disclosed resolution of a patent dispute between the company and Taiwan-based Realtek.

While most of the company’s sales growth was in China, Mr. Mao said there is opportunity to grow worldwide.

“Our products offer better price performance than our main competitor,” he said in a reference to Cisco Systems. “Our products are more energy-efficient.

“While we want to maintain market share in China, we have an opportunity to grow in the rest of the world. … We are starting to attract new enterprise customers.”

Revenue in the quarter was $342.7 million compared with revenue of $319.4 million in the same period of fiscal 2008, a 7 percent increase.

Chief Financial Officer Jay Zager told analysts that the company expects to achieve reven-ues of 345 million to $350 million.

Source:telegram