BOSTON.- EMC Corp, the No. 1 maker of corporate data storage equipment, reported quarterly profit that beat Wall Street forecasts and boosted a stock buyback on Thursday.
It said third-quarter net income rose to $492.9 million, or 23 cents a share, from $283.7 million, or 13 cents a share, a year earlier.
The company said it had profit excluding items of 17 cents per share.
Revenue rose 17 percent to $3.3 billion.
Analysts expected it to report profit of 17 cents per share on revenue of $3.2 billion.
Sales are being fueled by growth in software products acquired over the past few years.
EMC’s highest-profile asset is VMware Inc, a business software maker that it took public in an initial public offering in August. VMware now has a stock market value of more than $40 billion, making it the world’s fourth-largest publicly held software maker.
EMC, which owns 86 percent of VMware, has a market value of about $49 billion.
Chief Financial Officer David Goulden said in a statement that the company has increased a previously announced stock buyback plan from $1 billion to $2 billion.
He also reiterated a results forecast made in July.
In January the company said it expected to earn at least 64 cents per share on revenue of at least $12.7 billion in 2007.
In July it altered the language slightly, saying it expected to earn more than 64 cents per share on revenue of more than $12.7 billion.
Fuente: Reuters
