EMC Shows Records Are Meant to Be Broken

Remind me again why bears have been all over technology spending lately? Judging by the solid third-quarter earnings results that data storage king EMC (NYS: EMC) put up this morning, things look fairly rosy to me.

It was a record quarter for the company in terms of both revenue and net income. Quarterly consolidated revenue popped 18% to $5 billion, while the bottom line showed non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.37, which registers as a 23% jump. Both of these figures slightly topped Wall Street expectations, which were looking for $4.9 billion in sales and $0.36 earnings per share.

The record breaking doesn't stop there, though. Non-GAAP gross margin jumped to an all-time high of 63%. Revenue from the U.S. hit an all-time high of $2.7 billion, a 17% increase, and revenue from the Asia-Pacific and Japan region also grew 37% to hit an all-time record. Meanwhile, revenue from VMware (NYS: VMW) , which is majority-owned by EMC, increased by 32%.

EMC CEO Joe Tucci described the results as "clear evidence that EMC is at the center of the most transformative, disruptive, and opportunity-rich trends in IT history -- namely hybrid cloud computing and the explosion of Big Data. With the strategy, products and momentum in our favor, EMC remains extremely well positioned to help customers accelerate their journey to the cloud, discover the value of Big Data and transform IT into a source of greater efficiency, agility and control."

If there's one thing that society at large is good at nowadays, it's creating data -- loads of it. That data has to go somewhere and EMC addresses that growing need while winning share from rivals, who include names like Hewlett-Packard (NYS: HPQ) and IBM (NYS: IBM) . EMC is on track to keep breaking its records. Records are meant to be broken, after all.

Add EMC to your watchlist to see if it keeps breaking records. Sign up for a free trial of Rule Breakers to see why EMC subsidiary VMware may deserve a spot in your portfolio.

At the time thisarticle was published Fool contributor Evan Niu holds no position in any company mentioned. Click here to see his holdings and a short bio. The Motley Fool owns shares of EMC and International Business Machines. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended buying shares of VMware. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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