What happened
Shares of data management expert NetApp (NTAP 0.39%) surged as much as 10.5% higher on Wednesday morning, following a strong second-quarter earnings report.
So what
In the second quarter of fiscal year 2021, NetApp's sales rose 4% year over year to $1.42 billion. Adjusted earnings fell 4% to $1.05 per diluted share. Your average Wall Street analyst would have settled for earnings of roughly $0.73 per share on revenue near $1.32 billion. The results also exceeded NetApp's guidance targets across the board.
"We saw strength in all geographies with larger customers accelerating their digital transformations with NetApp," CEO George Kurian said on the earnings call. "Our competitors have real challenges in executing their product transitions that we are taking advantage of."
Image source: Getty Images.
Now what
Kurian called out storage technology rivals Pure Storage, Dell, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise by name, arguing that his company is stealing market share from all of these companies. Pure Storage has indeed been struggling to deliver growth in 2020 and HP's fourth-quarter results were flattish. Dell's sprawling product portfolio made up for weak storage sales with solid growth in business-grade laptop sales. In other words, the proof is in the pudding: NetApp really is winning market share in this unique business environment.
