EMC has reported record fourth-quarter earnings and set a new benchmark for company revenue earned in a year. EMC took in $US9.6 billion in revenue in 2005, a 17 per cent increase over the previous fiscal year.
It said revenue from its midrange storage systems grew 32 per cent in comparison with the fourth quarter of 2004 -- an increase driven by new, higher-performance products and tighter enterprise application integration of its Clariion, Centera and EMC Celerra network-attached storage (NAS) systems.
Total consolidated revenue for the fourth quarter was $US2.7 billion, 15 per cent higher than the $US2.3 billion reported for the same quarter a year earlier. Net quarterly income grew 27 per cent to $US409 million.
The storage company said its NAS revenue leaped almost 50 per cent during the fourth quarter, compared with the same quarter in 2004, with revenue from the company's high-end Symmetrix storage array up 19 per cent from the previous quarter.
The company said its DMX line of high-end storage arrays sold out in the fourth quarter and represented more than a third of all Symmetrix systems sales.
Along with the new record earnings, EMC its 10th consecutive quarter of growth.
"With 10 consecutive quarters of double-digit revenue growth behind us, we fully expect our momentum and level of execution to continue into 2006 and beyond," EMC CEO, Joe Tucci, said.
EMC pointed to strong growth during its latest quarter in systems revenue, which grew 19 per cent in comparison with the final quarter of 2004, when systems revenue hit $US1.3 billion.
The company grew its software license and maintenance revenue 16 per cent to a record $1 billion during the quarter. Professional services, systems maintenance and other services revenue grew only 4 per cent, to $403 million.
Content management software license revenue grew 25 per cent in the fourth quarter, based on Documentum enterprise content management software sales.
VMware also saw record quarterly revenue in the quarter, with a jump of 62 per cent compared with the year ago quarter.
"It was a quarter and year of billions," EMC's chief financial officer, Bill Teuber, said. "In addition to reaching a billion dollars in quarterly software revenues and spending more than a billion dollars during the year on R&D, we bought back more than $1 billion of our stock during the year."