There are several things we can look for this Tuesday on the
conference call.
The most important is the YOY revenue growth rate. I believe
it will be greater than the 124% number achieved last Q.
When asked by a Wallstreet Radio interviewer what drove him & his
company. Dan W. replied that one of the most important things
was revenue growth for the next few years. He wanted NetApp
to be one of the fastest companies to join Fortune 500. He
believed it would take $4 billion annual revenue to join the
club.
When asked how he was going to achieve this goal, Dan W. mentioned
by bringing new products to the market and maintain the current
GM. He went on to say in some cases NetApp designed new storage
products carried a greater gross profit margin than their
current GM on their balance sheet. However, he said he would
let his customers benefit from this design efficiency.
The long term growth looks good.
CNBC reported that EMC might choose to release their new NAS
product next Tuesday just before NetApp release its earnings.
I know that EMC realized that NetApp was a disruptive force
2 years ago. It hired Prof. Clayton Christensen from HBS
to help them compete against NetApp in the NAS space. More
than 15 months later, EMC has no comparable technology to
compete effective in NAS space and NetApp is moving up
market to take on EMC and others.
Following is a few quotes I gathered recently.
"EMC doesn't get it, It's rooted in the mainframe world...
David Hitz, Forbes.
"Our addressable market is at least as big as Cisco's." Dan W.
"We are competing against the traditional companies such as
Sun, Compaq anf HP to move storage onto the networks."Dan W.
Next year, NetApp will establish new frontiers with newly
acquired/develped technologies and through collaborations.
Hey, it's a moving target.
Accelarated earning growth, stable gross margins, Large
addressable market, excellent products, most importantly,
management know-how. NetApp is very solid. |
