Data storage specialist EMC (EMC) this morning reported results for the second quarter of 2014. In early morning trading, shares briefly rose as much as 3.7% on the news. As of 10:20 a.m., shares were up nearly 1%.
EMC saw sales rise 5% year-over-year, landing at $5.9 billion. Adjusted earnings edged up from $0.42 to $0.43 per share. The revenue figure was slightly above analyst expectations of $5.8 billion, and earnings were in line with Street projections.
The company's core information storage operations saw revenues increase 1% year-over-year, or 7% excluding high-end storage products. Virtual computing subsidiary VMware (VMW) recorded 17% sales growth, cloud platform Pivotal grew by 29%, and emerging storage sales increased by 52%. [VMware reported its second-quarter results Tuesday.]
Looking ahead, EMC sees full-year sales stopping at $24.6 billion while non-GAAP earnings should arrive at $1.91 per share. These projections were unchanged from guidance given in the first-quarter report.
"Our industry and customers are in the midst of a massively disruptive and transformational shift, and the pace of change is accelerating," said EMC CEO Joe Tucci in a prepared statement. "EMC detected it early on, put the right strategy in place and is executing well. New customers are coming to EMC for the first time, and existing customers are investing more heavily, because of our expanded capabilities across EMC Information Infrastructure, VMware and Pivotal."
The press release did not address the recent actions of activist investment firm Elliott Management, which built a $1 billion stake in EMC and hopes to spin VMware off as a separate entity. EMC shares jumped more than 5% overnight when Elliott's breakup plan was disclosed.