Expects to lose $800,000 in 1998 but turn profitable in 1999.
Wall Street expects it to turn profitable in 2001, "but we believe they'll be profitable way sooner than that," Mr. Kirson said.
In the meantime, the company burned through roughly $500 million, said Peter L. Buzy, Martek's chief financial officer, before earning enough on DHA sales to infant formula makers to turn profitable in 2003.
But in a research report, Mr. Strauss said that Boeing's costs did not appear to be declining rapidly enough for sales to turn profitable in 2015 and that the program could continue to spend $4 billion to $5 billion more than it gained in revenue over the next three years.
Many of the companies in its portfolio are too young to judge, though at least one, Birchbox, a subscription service, has reportedly struggled to turn profitable in recent years.
In an interview with Forbes, Winder said: "It's good to see someone in the sector turn profitable again, and we should see the rest of the group follow in the next couple of quarters.
That said, we expect that the company will turn profitable in 2019 (with a nominal profit) based on our interactive model for Dropbox, which details our estimates for the company's revenues and expenses for 2018 and 2019.
"Sun making the statement that they should turn profitable in their fiscal fourth quarter provided a little lift in that there's light at the end of the tunnel for some of these tech names," said Owen Fitzpatrick, head of the United States equity group at Bankers Trust Private Banking.
She's been selling the 2,800 cupcakes a month she calculates she needs to sell to cover her costs — she's taking only a small salary for now — but she says it's too early to predict when the store will turn profitable, in part because of the economy and in part because she fears losing business to rival cupcake entrepreneurs.
But the company insisted that Chrysler would again turn profitable in the last quarter of the year and asserted that total operating profits this year would match those of 1999.
The startup makes revenues on fees around the loans, and last year saw its direct lending business turn profitable in Q4, with the whole business expected to be profitable in the second half of this year, Phillips told me.
