Software Starts To Pay Off For EMCSoftware Starts To Pay Off For EMC

EMC Corp. is starting to reap benefits from its string of software acquisitions. EMC reported financial results Tuesday for its fourth quarter and all of 2004. Software license revenue, representing business from its Documentum , Legato , and VMware acquisitions, as well as other software company purchases, grew 43% in the most recent quarter.

Total fourth-quarter 2004 revenue was $2.4 billion, 27% higher than $1.86 million for the fourth quarter of 2003. Net income grew 46%, from $220 million, and 9 cents per share, to $321 million and 13 cents per share. For all of 2004, revenue was $8.2 billion, 32% higher than the $6.2 billion it reported for 2003. Net income for the year grew 76% to $871 million.

Joe Tucci, president and CEO at EMC, said in a statement that 2004 was a good year to expand the company's market position. He hopes 2005 will be the year to expand its share in markets by accelerating its pace of innovation and counting more on channel partners.

A financial analyst credits EMC for a strong year, but says trouble could come from the hardware side of the business. Kaushik Roy, a financial analyst at Susquehanna Financial Group, says, "Fibre Channel disk drive manufacturers like Seagate can't produce enough, [so] normal price declines are impacted, and EMC system prices won't come down as much as expected."