EMC Q2 earnings: $5.6 billion revenue; in line

EMC on Wednesday reported quarterly earnings of $0.42 on revenue of $5.6 billion, an increase of six percent over the same quarter a year ago.

The result met Wall Street's expectations on the nose, which reflected slowing IT spending across the industry. This is EMC's fourth quarter in a row of low single-digit growth after 10 straight quarters of double-digit growth before that.

Yesterday evening, subsidiary VMware beat expectations for its own quarterly earnings.

A breakdown of EMC's businesses:

• The Information Infrastructure group increased its revenue by 4 percent compared to the year-ago quarter, to $4.3 billion.
• The Information Storage group also upped revenue by 4 percent compared to the year-ago quarter, to $3.9 billion. Within it, "Emerging Storage" led with 39 percent growth; the "High-end Storage" and "Unified and Backup Recovery" segments also grew.
• The RSA Information Security group grew 3 percent year over year, to $228 million.
• The Information Intelligence group made no gains, ending the quarter with revenue of $152 million.
• Pivotal grew 11 percent year over year, to $70 million. Pivotal is an EMC-VMware joint venture backed by GE that aims to develop "next-generation data fabrics, application fabrics and a cloud-independent platform as a service."

Quarterly revenue from the United States increased 4 percent year over year to $3.0 billion, representing 53 percent of the company's total revenue. 

Revenue from outside the U.S. increased 8 percent year over year to $2.7 billion, or 47 percent of the total.

The strongest world group was the emerging countries—BRIC+13, as EMC calls it (that's Brazil, Russia, India, China, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam); those markets increased revenue 18 percent year over year.

Beyond that, Asia-Pacific and Japan increased revenue by 12 percent year over year; Latin America grew 12 percent; and Europe, Middle East and Africa grew 6 percent.

More quarterly numbers to know:

• Net income (non-GAAP): $907 million
• Operating cash flow, year to date: $2.9 billion ($2.3 billion free)
• Cash and similar on hand: $17.6 billion.

The company's outlook for 2013 remains the same: earnings of $1.85 on revenue of $23.5 billion. It said it plans to repurchase $3.5 billion worth of its common stock in 2013 and the first half of 2014.

"The strength and demand we saw during the quarter, despite a cautious IT spending environment, speaks to the soundness of our strategy, the value customers see in our federated business model, and the massive opportunity ahead in cloud computing, big data and trusted IT," chairman and CEO Joe Tucci said in a statement.

On the subsequent conference call, Tucci added that "uncertainties still exist" in global IT spending, with noted "tightness in micro IT spending." 

"Customers are being very cautious" with IT spend, "scrutinizing" and "elongating" approval processes, Tucci said. Still, "I believe we performed very well, especially…compared to our peers."