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Dell Technologies Inc. this morning reported strong revenue and earnings growth in its second quarter and raised forecasts for the full fiscal year, calming concerns that the integration of EMC Corp. was distracting the company from its core businesses.

Double-digit revenue percentage growth across all of its key business segments and triple-digit growth in hyperconverged infrastructure indicate that the company is firing on all cylinders after several quarters of slow storage sales. Total revenue rose 16 percent, to $23.1 billion, from a year ago. Net income jumped 21 percent, to $1.35 billion.

With operating income of $2.1 billion and cash flow of $2.6 billion, the company appears to be well-positioned to continue to pay down the $59 billion in debt it incurred for the 2016 EMC acquisition.

“We feel reasonably comfortable about the velocity of the business right now,” said Chief Financial Officer Tom Sweet. “Our growth is above the industry in most segments, which has helped drive strong cash flow performance and allowed us to make progress in debt repayment.”

Dell paid down $2.6 billion of loans during the quarter to bring total debt to $50.3 billion. The company holds $21.5 billion of cash and investments on its balance sheet.

Storage recovery

The Infrastructure Solutions Group, which encompasses products sold into the data center, showed particularly impressive performance with a record $9.2 billion in revenue, up 24 percent over a year ago. The storage business, which suffered revenue and market share declines in 2017, bounced back strongly, with a 13 percent increase in sales to $4.2 billion.

“We’re taking share, investing in capacity, improving the competitiveness of the portfolio and the indicators are good,” said Jeff Clarke, vice chairman of products and operations, who shook up the division early this year in a bid to boost storage sales.

Dell gained storage market share in the most recent International Data Corp. estimates for the first time since acquiring EMC, and “we fully expect Dell will gain share in both [server and external storage systems] when IDC releases second quarter share data,” said Matt Eastwood, an IDC senior vice president.

Sales of servers and networking equipment grew even more strongly than storage, with a 34 percent year-over-year increase. Server sales rose more than 25 percent for the fourth straight quarter, and Clarke said units are going out the door with faster central processing unit chips and more memory than ever. “It’s an indicator to us that we’re selling deeper into the data center,” he said.

Having largely digested EMC, “Dell is posturing as a much more strategic supplier than either Dell or EMC was as an independent company,” said David Vellante, chief analyst at Wikibon, a sister company of SiliconANGLE.

Overall, Dell is benefiting from a strong spending environment, with IDC forecasting that enterprises will invest in technology at about double the rate of overall gross domestic product growth for the foreseeable future. “We are in the early stages of a global, technology-led investment cycle in which every company is becoming a technology company,” Chief Executive Michael Dell (pictured), said in a prepared statement.

“Customers want to buy a variety of solutions from one partner, so we’re in a great position,” Clarke said. Competitor Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.’s decision to exit the low-margin server business has given also Dell greater latitude to compete in markets where its low cost structure is an advantage, Vellante noted.

The PC business continued to defy gravity, with 13 percent growth to $11.1 billion in the quarter. Dell said it shipped a record number of desktop and mobile units while also increasing average selling prices. Its 22.8 percent market share for commercial unit PC sales is its highest ever.

Dell raised the fiscal year guidance it provided just a month ago, saying it now expects revenues of between $90.5 billion and $92.0 billion, up from earlier guidance of $87.5 billion. Executives declined to the company’s plans to go public by buying out investors in its DVMT tracking stock.

Update: Perhaps partly for that reason, investors have kept a lid on share prices of the tracking stock. They were essentially flat in Friday midday trading.