Joerg Moellenkamp, a Sun employee, posted a bit of a diatribe on his blog about Sun’s stagnant stock price. It reflects what a lot of non-finance folks feel when they look at stock numbers, particularly for companies that they feel they know intimately. After all, Sun is profitable, has cash reserves, pays out a nice dividend — what’s the problem? The problem, of course, is that capital markets are obsessed with growth. It’s not enough to make money; you have to make more money than you were making last quarter. Otherwise, the company doesn’t get more valuable — it may not be getting less valuable, but it’s not getting more valuable either — and all your stock is is a tiny piece of the company that gets more or less valuable as the company does. A commentor on Moellenkamp’s blog puts it nicely: Anway, the real problem with Sun is that its revenue growth is teetering at zero. It’s real easy to imagine a puff of wind sending the sales numbers lower instead of higher. Especially with the unproven software strategy. Move the dial 10% this quarter and we’ll see a $28 stock. Software Development