Citing strong demand for its enhanced products and services, EMC
EMC’s storage hardware sales grew 15 percent to $1.1 billion in Q4, led by its high-end Symmetrix systems. Small- and medium-sized business customers helped the company’s midrange Clariion system sales grow 46 percent. said fourth quarter earnings rose 46 percent to $321 million (13 cents per share), from $220 million (9 cents per share) in Q4 2003.
The Hopkinton, Mass., information systems vendor also announced Q4 revenue of $2.36 billion, which was 27 percent greater than the $1.86 billion reported in the year-ago quarter.
The vendor, which competes with IBM, Hitachi Data Systems, Veritas and
Network Appliance, said software license revenue grew 43 percent on sales of
$410 million in Q4 compared with the year-ago period. This was sparked by
its acquisitions of Dantz, Documentum, Legato and VMware.
EMC, which reports results from its virtualization subsidiary separately
from its other software offerings, said VMware posted record revenues of $71
million in the fourth quarter, an increase of 159 percent over VMware’s Q4
2003.
The software division’s success was the catalyst for EMC’s services
business, which the outfit said increased 40 percent to $611.5 million in
Q4. Customers solicited EMC’s help to set up their information lifecycle
management architecture.
EMC President and CEO Joe Tucci pointed to EMC’s sixth consecutive quarter
of double-digit revenue growth on a conference call Tuesday.
Calling 2004 an “exceptional year” for EMC, the executive said the company
was able to extend its market and further its information lifecycle
management (ILM) and virtual infrastructure strategies. In 2004, Tucci said,
EMC accomplished goals of growing its top line 21 percent while elevating
its operating margins from 9.1 percent in Q1 to 15.4 percent in Q4.
Tucci said IBM remains EMC’s biggest competitor for its ability to bundle
products and services, but he promised EMC would expand its share of what it
anticipates will be a $51 million market opportunity. EMC plans to do this
with regular 12- or 18-month product updates and new innovations.
The executive also said he expects 2005 will see be a period of growth of between 7 and 8 percent. Terabytes on disk arrays will grow more than 70 percent, as will the market for server virtualization, he said.
Looking forward, Tucci said EMC expects earnings for Q1 2005 to be between
$2.23 billion to $2.25 billion on EPS of
10 to 11 cents.
For the fiscal year, EMC posted 2004 revenue of $8.23 billion, nearly a third higher than the $6.24 billion reported in 2003. Net income for the full 2004 fiscal year grew 76 percent to $871 million on 36 cents per share, compared with $496 million on 22 cents per share reported for fiscal year 2003.
EMC Q4 Sales Soar on ILM Strength
