Novell still losing, but OS sales up 77%

The Register tells it like it today with some quarterly results from embattled Linux provider Novell.

Novell narrowed losses in the third quarter, bolstered by the SUSE Linux business beginning to pull more weight. For the quarter ended July 31, Novell reports a net loss of $3.42m, a 48 per cent difference compared with a loss of $6.5m in the same quarter the previous year. Excluding one-time items, Novell’s income from operations totaled $16.1m, down from $23.8m year-over-year. Revenue increased to $243.1m from $236.3m the previous year.

Linux led most of the growth at Novell this quarter. During Q3, Novell reported $22 million of revenue from Open Platform Solutions and fully $21 million of that number was from Linux products. This is a 77% revenue increase year-over-year for the platform, Novell executives said in a release.

So they’re still in a hole, it’s just not as deep a hole as it was tis time last year.