- "We have a binding, solid merger in place," said EMC (EMC -1.2%) CEO Joe Tucci on his company's Q4 earnings call, insisting Dell's acquisition of EMC will occur in spite of the decline seen in both EMC shares and the value of EMC's 80% VMware (VMW -9.3%) stake. "We are confident we’ll meet contractual terms. There are significant penalties in place both ways if this doesn’t happen ... The banks have told us they can raise the money."
- With all eyes on the Dell deal, EMC didn't bother providing formal guidance in its Q4 report. The company's core Information Infrastructure unit saw revenue drop 4% Y/Y in Q4 to $5.07B (-1% exc. forex), with Information Storage sales dropping 4% to $4.65B.
- Exec David Goulden: "Customers are buying ‘just enough’ and ‘just in time’ for their traditional environments." Cloud storage adoption and the growth of upstarts such as Nutanix and Pure Storage have been weighing on sales.
- VMware, meanwhile, has been downgraded to neutral ratings by Baird and Summit Research in response to its soft Q1/2016 guidance (was accompanied by a Q4 beat, a job cut announcement, and news of CFO/COO Jonathan Chadwick's departure). Summit's Srini Nandury: "While the billings will likely be better, we do not expect license revenue growth to return to mid-single digits until middle of next year."
- Pac Crest's Rob Owens (Sector Weight rating): "Emerging businesses showed some bright spots, but the core compute business remains a large portion of the revenue mix, which sets up 2016 for declines in growth. Investor concerns also are likely to persist over the Dell acquisition and the issuance of a tracking stock. We wait for signs of stabilization before becoming more constructive on shares.”
- Weak sales for VMware's core vSphere/ESXi server virtualization platform continue weighing: On its earnings call (transcript), VMware stated compute license bookings (server virtualization) fell by a low-double digit % Y/Y in Q4, and forecast declines will continue. Management license bookings, which include cloud management, the NSX SDN/network virtualization platform, and the vSAN storage virtualization platform, rose by a low-teens %.
- End-user computing license bookings (PC virtualization/enterprise mobility) were a strong spot, rising over 20% Y/Y. The NSX annual bookings run-rate is now above $600M (up ~3x from a year ago), and the vSAN run-rate "well over" $100M.
- EMC: Q4 results, earnings release. VMware: Q4 results, earnings release.