EMC shares ride VMware madness

77 per cent profit boost

By Cade Metz in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Enterprise, 25th October 2007 19:17 GMT

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EMC saw its stock price leap more than eight per cent today, thanks in part to its 86 per cent stake in the hotter-than-hot virtualization outfit, VMware.

This morning, the storage behemoth announced third quarter profits of $492.9m, a 77 per cent increase from the same quarter last year, and by 2:37 eastern standard time, its share price had jumped 8.61 per cent to $24.47.

EMC sales topped $3.3bn during the quarter ending September 30, a 17 per cent increase from the same quarter last year, but profits were also boosted by the frenzy surrounding VMware. The server-slicing company pumped its own profits 90 per cent in Q3, after an August IPO pulled in $1.1bn.

"Among the many standouts during the quarter was VMware’s quarterly performance and the completion of the initial public offering of approximately 10 per cent of VMware," said Joe Tucci, EMC chairman, president, and chief executive officer. "VMware is not only one of the fastest-growing businesses in the history of the software industry, but it has also created an entire IT category based on one of the very few game-changing technologies out there today."

Meanwhile, VMware's share price jumped 10.55 per cent today, to $114.36.

Bootnote

The day wasn't quite so rosy for another storage vendor. A day after it announced a 60 per cent quarterly profit drop, Symantec saw its share prices dip 13.18 per cent. ®

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