VMware became the latest tech company to blow past Wall Street estimates late Tuesday when the company reported that sales grew 69% in the first quarter.
VMware’s revenues of $438.2 million were $16 million ahead of Thomson Financial forecasts, and earnings of 22 cents a share were in line with expectations. The server virtualization company predicted 50% sales growth for the rest of the year, in line with estimates, and its shares soared 15% in after-hours trading.
Yahoo also reported better than expected results late Tuesday, with earnings of 11 cents a share and sales after traffic acquisition costs of $1.35 billion. But analysts expressed doubt that the results were strong enough to attract a significantly higher takeover offer from Microsoft.
Also after the close, Broadcom shares jumped 10% after its 14.5% sales growth beat estimates.
The results were good news for the stock market, which slumped during the day on disappointing results from Texas Instruments, UAL and DuPont and rising oil prices.
TI was down 6% on a disappointing outlook, and Netflix plunged 24% on its outlook.
Lexmark, Novellus and Tellabs fell on their results too, but Volterra and Logitech gained on their numbers.
AT&T was up modestly on in-line results and strong wireless growth.
Apple fell 5% on an American Technology Research downgrade ahead of its results late Wednesday.
The Nasdaq lost 31 to 2376, the S&P fell 12 to 1375, and the Dow dropped 104 to 12,720. Volume rose to 3.86 billion shares on the NYSE, and 1.95 billion on the Nasdaq. Decliners led by a 22-8 margin on the NYSE, and by a 22-7 margin on the Nasdaq. Downside volume was 72% on the NYSE, and 76% on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 88-111 on the NYSE, and 47-158 on the Nasdaq.