EMC finishes financial year strongly


24 Jan 2007

Data storage and software maker EMC has recorded a strong finish to its financial year, with record revenues in all of the company’s business lines.

For the fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2006, EMC reported record revenue and strong profit growth. The world’s largest supplier of IT storage systems, which employs 1,500 people in Ireland, has now clocked up 14 consecutive quarters of double-digit year-on-year revenue growth.

Total consolidated revenue for EMC’s full 2006 fiscal year was a record US$11.15bn – a rise of 15pc on the previous year – and profits were US$1.22bn. Systems revenue grew 15pc during the year to US$5.14bn, helped by the introduction of new models and enhancements to EMC’s entire range of networked storage products. Software also performed strongly, with licence and maintenance revenue helping this division to grow 20pc. Professional services, systems maintenance and other services revenue increased by 10pc last year.

The company’s information storage business was bolstered by sales of its Symmetrix systems, which had their strongest growth in six years. Two recent acquisitions, RSA and VMware, both showed strong growth.

The final three months of the year saw better than expected revenue and profit performance, the company said. Revenues for the quarter were US$3.2bn, 19pc higher than same quarter in 2005 and US$55m more than EMC had forecast. Profits for the quarter were US$389m.

EMC’s various lines of business – storage, security, virtualisation and content management – all had record revenues for the quarter.

Joe Tucci, chairman, president and CEO of EMC, said the company was positioned to repeat the growth again in the current year. He said that the company was well placed to take further share in the information infrastructure market which he said was worth US$60bn.

EMC has advised that it plans to record revenues of “at least US$12.7bn” in 2007, representing year-on-year growth of 14pc.

By Gordon Smith