UPDATED 12:11 EDT / JULY 26 2013

EMC Blames Single-Digit Q2 Growth on ‘Weakened IT Spending Environment’

EMC posted record second quarter earnings Thursday morning, but analysts are not exactly pleased with the results. The storage juggernaut reported a net profit of $701 million or 32 cents a share, up 7.8 percent from the 29 cents a share it recorded in the same period last year but below the consensus estimate of 42 cents.

EMC’s revenue rose 5.7 percent to $5.61 billion, slightly above the $5.6 billion Wall Street anticipated. The company’s core Information Infrastructure business grew 4 percent, as did the Information Storage group. RSA meanwhile saw sales increase three percent to $228 million, and Pivotal advanced 11 percent to $70 million.

Cost of product sales were up 6.9 percent and cost of services rose 7.7 percent. Joe Tucci, EMC’s CEO and chairman of the board, praised his company for soldiering on despite a difficult business environment.

“The strength and demand we saw during the quarter, despite a cautious IT spending environment, speaks to the soundness of our strategy, the value customers see in our federated business model, and the massive opportunity ahead in cloud computing, Big Data and trusted IT,” Tucci said in a statement. “EMC Information Infrastructure, VMware and Pivotal are positioned on the leading edge of these significant trends. Each business is focused on building its own unique technologies and independent partner ecosystems to offer customers greater choice.”

VMware was the fastest growing member of the EMC federation in the second quarter. It beat the average analyst estimate of 77 cents per share with earnings of $244.1 million, or 79 cents a share, on sales of $1.24 billion. The better-than-expected results triggered a 17 percent increase in the virtualization giant’s stock price, marking its biggest gain since October 2008.


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