EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), the world's biggest maker of storage computers, is scheduled to release its third quarter earnings after the closing bell on Thursday, October 21, 2010. Analysts, on average, expect the company to report earnings of 30 cents per share on revenue of $4.15 billion. In the year ago period, the company reported earnings of 23 cents per share on revenue of $3.52 billion.
EMC Corporation develops, delivers, and supports information infrastructure and virtual infrastructure technologies and solutions. The company operates in two business segments: EMC's Information Infrastructure business and the EMC's VMware Virtual Infrastructure business.
In the preceding second quarter, the Hopkins, Massachusetts-based company's net income was $426 million, or 20 cents a share, compared to $205 million, or 10 cents a share, in the year-earlier quarter. On an adjusted basis, the company earned 28 cents a share in the second quarter. Revenue climbed 24% to $4.02 billion. Analysts, on average, expected the company to report earnings of 27 cents per share on revenue of $3.98 billion. In the second quarter, the company achieved all-time record year-to-date operating cash flow and free cash flow of $2.1 billion and $1.6 billion, which grew 44% and 47%, respectively, compared with the year-ago period.
At its last earnings call in late July, the company said that it expects to exceed its previous full-year 2010 outlook of $16.5 billion in revenue, 84 cents in consolidated GAAP diluted earnings per share, and $1.18 in consolidated non-GAAP diluted earnings per share. For 2010, consolidated restructuring and acquisition-related charges, stock-based compensation expense, and intangible asset amortization are expected to be $0.02, $0.23 and $0.09 per diluted share, respectively.
The company has continued to gain market share in the external storage market. According to a recently released report from technology research firm IDC, EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 25.7 percent revenue share in the second quarter, up from 22.0% in the year-ago period.
EMC is poised to benefit from improving corporate-technology demand, IT infrastructure upgrade cycle and growing popularity of cloud computing and virtualization solutions. The company has forged several local and global alliances to help customers to deploy cloud infrastructure for business optimization. According to IDC, worldwide IT spending is expected to grow 6% to $1.51 trillion in 2010.
In terms of stock performance, EMC shares have gained nearly 11 percent since the beginning of the year.
Disclosure: Author doesn't own any of the stocks discussed here.
