Does NTAP Expect Sales to Rise 30% This Year, Outpacing Industry...
I think it is fair to say that we NTAP longs own a richly valued stock (yes this is a relative stmt). It has been clearly demonstrated that NTAP dominates in the internet arena with EMC a gorilla in the E-Fortune 100 type of large companies. Therefore I find the statement below (Which I highlited in bold) to be a potential warning light...any thoughts anyone?
Good luck,
Eric
EMC Expects Sales to Rise 30% This Year, Outpacing Industry!
Taipei, June 14 (Bloomberg) -- EMC Corp., the world's No. 1 maker of computer data-storage systems, said it expects sales to expand about 30 percent this year,outpacing the industry's average of 25 percent.
The Hopkinton, Massachusetts-based company said tronger orders in Asia will help boost revenue, as well as stronger demand from large corporations as they increase their information technology budget now that the problem related to computers not recognizing dates in 2000 has been resolved.
Gains from large companies such as Home Depot Inc. and Cisco Systems are important as Internet start-ups are more reluctant to spend following the 21 percent drop in the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index in the past two months. Small Internet companies make up 10 percent to 15 percent of EMC's sales.
``The global 2000 companies have their Y2K issues behind them and are focusing on going e-business and are more than picking up the slack,'' Joseph Tucci, EMC's president, said in an interview at the World Congress on Information Technology in Taipei. ``We're outpacing the market as far as I can see.''
Sales from Asia surged 60 percent to $139 million in the first quarter, making up 7 percent of revenue. The company's overall sales rose 23 percent. Sales from its main server business doubled in Asia, Tucci said. Korea Telecom Corp., Korea's biggest phone company, is among EMC's biggest customers in the region.
``Asia is the fastest growing part of the world for us right now,'' he said.
Tucci also said he expects the increasing use of multimedia content over the Internet -- ranging from movies, long-distance education and video conferencing -- to ncrease the use of its storage products.
``It's the advent of the oncoming wave of rich media,'' he said.
EMC shares rose 2, or 2.9 percent, to 71 yesterday.
Jun/14/2000 2:16 ET |
