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Technology Stocks : EMC How high can it go? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tulvio Durand who wrote (11909)	1/23/2001 12:12:20 AM
From: puborectalis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17183

Earnings preview: EMC January 22, 2001 12:00 AM ET by Michelle Rushlo EMC (EMC), the Massachusetts company that helped turn hard drives into a multibillion-dollar business, is scheduled to tell investors early Tuesday how it performed during the final quarter of the year. Analysts say there's little chance the company will disappoint when it reports its earnings for the quarter, and many say EMC can weather the high-tech spending slowdown. "Storage will continue to see robust fundamental demand, and EMC is pretty well-positioned," said Doug van Dorsten, an analyst with Thomas Weisel Partners. "Customers come back and buy storage every year" even if they forgo other things. EMC is expected to earn 23 cents per share, according to the consensus estimate from First Call/Thomson Financial. It earned 17 cents during the same period of 1999. Analysts, so far, expect EMC to earn $1.02 per share during 2001, and van Dorsten said he would be really surprised if the company guided downward. The company's stock is down roughly a quarter from its year high of $104.94, but it has ridden out the tough recent months better than most PC makers, some of which have watched investors lop 50 percent or more of their stock prices. A good position "In the very, very short run, they're in good position," said SG Cowen Securities analyst Richard Chu. He said it is not, however, clear how information technology spending will shape up for the next year or year and a half. Van Dorsten said that even if companies scale back their IT spending, it probably won't be in storage because demand keeps charging ahead. And it's not just the eye-straining number of emails being created that drive demand, he said. It's also the growing use of graphics, video and audio -- all of which require more storage than the average word processing document. "There may be some fluctuation from quarter to quarter [for EMC]. We are not so glib as to say that there will be blue skies with nary a cloud in sight," van Dorsten said. But there is a robust growth pattern for storage for the foreseeable future, and EMC has a very large install base and a "heck of a good sales force."