If you bought VMware (NYSE: VMW) shares at the IPO just about three years ago, you've had to endure some tough times. The stock dropped as much as 69% from the original price in the deepest, darkest parts of 2008, and the stock chart looks like the blade of a crosscut saw: two steps up and one step back; repeat ad nauseam.
But the stock has limped back to wuthering heights to that waltz-tinged cadence, last night's closing price a shiny 135% above the year-ago mark and a triple in about 18 months. And after that, VMware reported a stellar second quarter, driving the price up even further. Original IPO buyers are sitting on a 42% profit today while the S&P 500 dropped 23% over the same period.
Sales in the quarter increased by 48% year over year to $674 million, most of which came from service and support contracts rather than license payments. Trailing free cash flows improved 33% over the year-ago metric, and GAAP earnings more than doubled from $0.08 per share to $0.18 per share. Having Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) nibbling at one heel and Citrix Systems (Nasdaq: CTXS) at the other clearly isn't hurting VMware too badly.
The proportion of services to total revenue keeps increasing for VMware, meaning that customers are taking a long view of these virtual computing products and locking in to highly profitable and very renewable support contracts. Like Linux vendor Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), VMware gives away some of its software tools for free and expects customers to come back for paid support services down the line. The growing service focus also smells like IBM (NYSE: IBM) from where I sit, and you can absolutely have worse role models than Big Blue.
As I mentioned a couple hundred words ago, this stock has climbed out of the basement to become anything but cheap. VMware opened at 127 times trailing earnings this morning, which is a steep stack of expectations to live up to. But cloud computing and virtual machines are the future of information technology, and nobody is better positioned to profit from the onrushing tsunami of business opportunity. Networked storage specialist NetApp (Nasdaq: NTAP) and early cloud specialist Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) come pretty close, but VMware is the only viable pure play on cloud architectures.
Will VMware's stock continue waltzing toward the stars or is the music about to stop? Discuss in the comments below.
