EMC: Everything's 'Better'

EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) closed its fiscal year today with better-than-expected quarterly growth. And while guidance for next quarter is no better than previous expectations, the company expects growth for 2004 to exceed 25 percent (see EMC Posts Q4 Profit).

The quarter completed a strong turnaround year for EMC, which reported $496 million in income for fiscal 2003 after losing $119 million in 2002. EMC's quarterly revenues were $1.86 billion, up 23 percent sequentially. Quarterly net income was $220 million or 9 cents per diluted share, compared with $159 million and 7 cents per share the previous quarter (see EMC Cowboys Up in Q3).

EMC's revenues support a sense that IT spending on storage is enjoying an uptick. The company posted strong results across all of its product lines, including newly acquired software from Legato and Documentum acquisitions. Revenue from its high-end Symmetrix SAN array and related software was $732 million, up 17 percent sequentially. DMX, the newest version of Symmetrix, accounted for 95 percent of Symmetrix revenue (see EMC Flexes DMXes and EMC Debuts DMX, Part Deux). The Clariion mid-tier SAN system and related software brought in $270 million for an 18 percent gain from the previous quarter. EMCs Celerra NAS family had $161 million in revenues for an 18 percent sequential gain, driven by the newest gateway, the NS600G (see EMC Massages Midrange NAS).

Legato products contributed $77 million to EMC for the quarter, and Documentum added $31 million. EMC closed both acquisition deals during the quarter (see EMC Closes Legato Acquisition and EMC to Close Documentum Buy).

EMC CEO Joe Tucci crowed about the company’s 2003 success during a conference call with analysts today, then broke into a commercial for EMC’s information lifecycle management (ILM) push this year.