Shares of VMware Inc. shot up more than 6 percent today as the maker of computer virtualization software announced it expects to report better-than-forecast earnings next week.

The company, part of the Dell Technologies family of enterprise software and hardware, said it expects second-quarter revenue, to be reported Aug. 24, to come in between $1.894 billion and $1.906 billion. It forecast a profit before certain costs such as stock compensation of $1.15 to $1.19 a share.

Those forecasts are up from a previously forecast profit of $1.11 to $1.14 a share on revenue of $1.84 billion to $1.89 billion. Analysts had been reckoning a profit of $1.13 a share on $1.86 billion in revenue.

In particular, the company said its license revenue rose between 13 and 14.4 percent in the quarter, to $727 million to $737 million. It also cited “broad-based strength across product portfolio.”

Shares today rose 6.6 percent, to about $98.02, a high for the past year. They’ve been climbing since hitting a trough of $45.75 in early January 2016.

The company also said it’s planning to raise up to $1 billion in debt, specifically senior notes, as part of a plan to buy back $1 billion in stock over the next year. That’s on top of VMware’s previous, ongoing $1.2 billion stock repurchase program for fiscal 2018 announced in January, which still has $0.9 billion remaining for repurchase. Buybacks are often viewed positively by investors because they reduce the number of shares and thus put upward pressure on the share price.

For the full fiscal year, which now ends in February 2019, the company forecast revenue of about $7.83 billion and earnings per share of $5.08, higher than analysts on average were expecting: $7.68 billion and $4.93 per share. VMware had already raised its guidance for the rest of the year in June, though at the time, investors didn’t greet the change with much enthusiasm.

“It’s all positive,” said Dave Vellante, chief analyst at Wikibon, owned by the same company as SiliconANGLE. “Better guidance going forward signals business momentum.”

The company, whose software pioneered the idea of emulating computers and networking in software for greater flexibility and lower cost, has been under pressure from a more sweeping move by customers lately to the cloud. VMware has scrambling to strike deals with onetime rivals such as Amazon Web Services Inc. and Microsoft Corp. and branching out into new areas such as desktop virtualization, endpoint management, hyperconverged infrastructure and network virtualization.

VMware Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger said during the first-quarter earnings call that partnerships with AWS, Oracle Corp. and Google Inc. are starting to bear fruit. The company is expected to provide more news on those and other partnerships and upcoming products at its annual VMworld conference starting Aug. 27 in Las Vegas.

Photo: Robert Hof