Topic: How To Invest

Pat: Please give me your take on EMC, the U.S. data storage specialist.

Article Excerpt

EMC Corp., $16.81, symbol EMC on New York (Shares outstanding: 2.0 billion; Market cap: $34.0 billion), designs, makes, sells and supports data-storage hardware and software. EMC also provides related services for data storage across networks. The company also owns an 84% stake in VMware Inc., $41.87, symbol VMW on New York (Shares outstanding: 399.8 million; Market cap: $16.7 billion). This investment accounts for 41.6% of EMC’s market cap. EMC operates in four segments: 1) Data-storage hardware, software and services (77% of revenue). 2) VMware Inc., which makes and sells virtualization software and accounts for 14% of EMC’s revenue. Virtualization software helps make large corporate networks more efficient. 3) Content management and archiving (5% of revenue) for web pages, emails and other documents. 4) RSA information security (4% of revenue), which provides encryption and other security products and services. Last July, EMC paid $2.1 billion for Data Domain Inc., which specializes in duplication technology. This lets companies cut their data-storage costs by reducing the need…