EMC Turns In Another Boffo Quarterly Report Card

EMC is making a habit of beating analysts' earnings estimates.

On July 21, the world's largest independent storage and data security vendor posted record Q2 revenue of $4.02 billion, a 24 percent increase from the same period a year ago.

EMC’s three-month revenue exceeded an estimate of $3.98 billion by an aggregation of analysts. It was the fourth straight quarterly report that exceeded Wall Street expectations.

EMC, which earned 28 cents per share for its stockholders, posted U.S. sales of $2.1 billion, an improvement of 28 percent year-over-year.

"For the second consecutive quarter, EMC once again turned a triple play by gaining market share while investing for the future and increasing profitability," CFO David Goulden told listeners on the company’s conference call with analysts. "With this, we also expanded gross and operating margins and generated all-time record year-to-date operating and free cash flow." 

EMC did well in selling its large-enterprise—and relatively expensive—Symmetrix arrays during the quarter, indicating a noticeable strengthening in the overall storage purchasing climate.

The Hopkinton, Mass.-based company's inline deduplication Data Domain mid-range storage systems also sold well. Revenue from that section of the business increased by one-third over last year to about $600 million.

When EMC acquired Data Domain in 2009 for $2.3 billion, EMC President, CEO and Chairman Joe Tucci told media members and analysts that it would comprise a $1 billion business on its own. If it keeps on its current trajectory, Data Domain sales could hit that mark by 2011.

EMC has put heavy emphasis on continuing to penetrate the fast-growing midrange enterprise market with its new DD offerings. The company introduced its latest Data Domain storage package only two days ago.

"EMC is benefiting from improved IT spending and customer focus on data centers," Wall Street analyst William Choi of Jefferies & Co. wrote in an advisory recommending EMC as a "buy" to customers.

"EMC has achieved meaningful revenue synergy from the Data Domain acquisition. The high-end V-Max product is also ramping well. We continue to like EMC's diversified customer base, product breadth, and solid execution."