BRCD price isn't any higher than NTAPs is it? They made .11 cents last Q........
Tuesday February 15 5:09 PM ET
NetAapp Profits Double, Splits Stock
SUNNYVALE, Calif. (Reuters) - Network Appliance Inc. (NasdaqNM:NTAP - news), a maker of storage devices widely used by Web sites, on Tuesday said its profits more than doubled in the latest quarter and announced a 2-for-1 stock split.
Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Network Appliance said its net income rose 111 percent to $19.8 million in its fiscal third quarter ended Jan. 28 from $9.4 million a year ago. Earnings per share rose to 11 cents a share from 6 cents a share. The Wall Street consensus was for earnings of 10 cents a share, according to First Call/Thomson Financial.
Revenues doubled to $151.3 million from $75.6 million.
``NetApp's business growth accelerated worldwide and was primarily driven by the strength of e-business infrastructure deployments, which now represent over one-third of our business,' Chief Executive Dan Warmenhoven said in a statement.
Network Appliance has seen its stock price surge to 151-9/16 at Tuesday's close, up 3-1/4 on the day, and far above a year low of 19-1/16 as it has benefited from the torrid growth of the Internet. As more and more Web sites crop up and companies go on line, they are buying Network Appliance's products to store and manage vast amounts of digital information.
Network Appliance's products also are used to speed access to Web sites, and allow data to be pooled centrally and then accessed from any point along a network. It has also been selling more of its wares to Internet service providers and Internet portals.
Network Appliance counts companies such as brokerage Bear, Stearns & Co., cell phone and chipmaker Motorola Inc., and computer network company Cisco Systems Inc. as customers.
The company also announced a two-for-one stock split of its common stock, around March 22, to shareholders of record on March 10. After the split, the company will have about 304.6 million shares of common stock outstanding.
For the first nine months, Network Appliance's net income rose 98 percent to $49.3 million, or 29 cents per share, from $24.9 million, or 16 cents per share, a year earlier.
Revenues for the first nine months rose 91 percent to $379.3 million from $198.6 million.
WAs looking for someone who heard the cc........from Yahoo
I just got done listening in on the NTAP
conference call and wanted to mention a couple
of things that I found interesting and
positive:
1. About 40% of this quarter's revenues were
from Internet or Internet-related companies,
be they ISPs, e-commerce dot-coms, clicks and
mortar hybrids, etc.
2. Unlikely to be selling software separately
to run on generic third-party boxes or supporting other vendor storage arrays or SANs
on the back end; customers are demanding an
all-in-one solution and rigorous data
integrity.
3. Many barriers to a customer acceptance of
filers in the past (company politics, backup
issues, database vendor integration) are no
longer encountered.
4. Netcache products are actually helping
in getting Netapp in the door to a previously
closed company. Tom Mendoza told the story of
how British Telecom was using EMC primarily for
storage, then they started using Netcache and
were so impressed it gave Netapp the leverage
to steal future storage orders away from EMC
and into Netapp filers.
5. Netapp is interested in using their stock
for potential acquisitions, but haven't found
any good companies that have the hardware or
software expertise to give Netapp something
they don't already have. Nothing in the whole world? They asked a major
investment firm to research it and give them a
list of potential acquisition candidates that
would be good fits and they couldn't come up
with any! They are following the CSCO model
but unlike CSCO at this stage there are not a
lot of technology startups that NTAP wants or
needs to acquire.
Bruce |
