EMC meets Wall St in Q4

Storage giant EMC spared Wall Street any shocks with its Q4 numbers this morning.

The storage vendor turned in revenues of $2.71bn, up 15 per cent on the year. Net income was $148m, well down on last year's $321m. However, once a raft of charges were stripped out, net income was up 27 per cent to $409m, or $0.17 per share, in line with analysts' forecasts.

The special charges in Q4 included $14m related to its acquisition of Captiva Sofware, $180m for income taxes on the "repatriation" of $3bn of overseas income, and $80m for its workforce "rebalancing" programme (or layoffs).

For the full year, revenues were up 17 per cent to $9.7bn, with net income, including charges, up 30 per cent to $1.1bn.

The firm trumpeted the performance of its software businesses, which breached the $1bn per quarter mark for the first time. This includes the former Documentum and VMware businesses.

EMC set forecasts in line with Wall Street expectations. It expects revenues of between $2.57bn and $2.59bn in the first quarter, with earnings per share of $0.14. For the full year, revenues should come in between $11.1bn and $11.3bn, with earnings of $0.63 to $0.66 per share.®