~OT~ Brocade beats Street earnings forecast
SAN JOSE, Calif., Feb 21 (Reuters) - Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (NasdaqNM:BRCD - news) on Wednesday turned in first-quarter net earnings and sales that beat Wall Street estimates.
Brocade, which makes switches to connect computer data networks, a fast-growing market, said first-quarter earnings were $32.5 million, or 13 cents per diluted share, compared with $7.3 million, or 3 cents per share a year ago.
Revenues for the quarter rose to $165.0 million from $42.7 million a year earlier.
Analysts polled by First Call/Thomson Financial research had on average forecast Brocade would earn 12 cents per share on revenues of $162.44 million.
The stock shot higher in after-hours trade in response to the earnings surprise, hitting $45-3/4 on Instinet, up from $44-11/16 at the Nasdaq close.
Brocade shares have taken a beating amid the recent downturn for technology stocks, falling by 42 percent since the start of the year.
But Brocade has outperformed storage industry heavyweight EMC Corp. (NYSE:EMC - news) by about 40 percent and the American Stock Exchange Computer Hardware Index (^HWI - news) by nearly 70 percent since the end of 1999.
Brocade dominates the market for fibre channel switches for Storage Area Networks, which aim to improve corporate data management and cut the load on traditional network servers by separating data storage from the main network. |
