EMC Corporation has reported first-quarter 2015 financial results.
Consolidated first-quarter revenue was $5,6-billion, up 2% year-over-year and up 6% on a constant currency basis. GAAP earnings per weighted average diluted share was $0,13, down 32% year-over-year. Non-GAAP earnings per weighted average diluted share was $0,31, down 11% compared with the year-ago quarter.

EMC generated $1,1-billion in operating cash flow and $755-million in free cash flow in the first quarter, and ended the quarter with $13,5-billion in cash and investments. The company repurchased approximately $1,5-billion worth of its common stock in the first quarter and returned approximately $230-million to shareholders via a quarterly dividend.

Joe Tucci, EMC chairman and CEO, says, “We are pleased that we slightly exceeded our first-quarter non-GAAP EPS expectations; however, we fell a bit short on first-quarter storage revenue due to geo-political factors in Russia and China and not executing as crisply as we had expected in the first quarter. That says, we are confident that we will meet our business outlook for the year. Our investments in high-growth areas are bearing fruit, and the scale and strength of our federated businesses continue to provide a steadily increasing number of large, multi-national customers with the capabilities needed to build their digital agendas and undergo massive IT transformations.”

Zane Rowe, EMC CFO, says, “Our financial results were broadly in line with our expectations for the quarter and previously disclosed outlook for the year, thanks to the hard work of the entire EMC team. By realigning our organization and optimizing our investments, we were able to drive further cost efficiencies in the quarter. We are well positioned for the remainder of 2015 with a strong portfolio, tremendous potential in our six key growth opportunities, and increasing strategic relevance with customers. We will continue to aggressively look for opportunities to grow the revenue line, become more efficient and increase shareholder value.”

David Goulden, CEO of EMC Information Infrastructure, says, “With most of the factors that impacted first-quarter storage revenue versus our expectations now behind us, the future is rich with opportunity for EMC Information Infrastructure. We continue to expand our lead in traditional storage market segments by bridging the gap between current and newer storage technologies to lead customers into a new digital age. We are evolving our storage portfolio and have leading positions in newer technologies – including flash, scale-out file and object storage, software-defined storage and converged infrastructure – that are growing much faster than traditional storage. Our market-segment share in most of these areas exceeds our strong leadership in traditional external storage. Finally, by working more closely with our Federation partners to leverage our best-of-breed portfolio and collective influence, our strategic relevance with our largest customers continues to grow and open up new opportunities.”

Business highlights:
* EMC Information Infrastructure – first-quarter revenue was down 1% year-over-year, and up 3% on a constant currency basis. Information Storage revenue in the first quarter was flat, and up 3% on a constant currency basis. Within the Converged Infrastructure business, Vblock-related first-quarter revenue was up more than 30% compared to the year-ago quarter. Emerging Storage revenue had solid growth in the first quarter, with notably strong growth for EMC XtremIO and EMC Isilon products. RSA first-quarter revenue grew 1% year-over-year.

* VMware – first-quarter 2015 revenue within EMC was up 12% year-over-year as the business continued making significant progress on its strategic initiatives focused on the software-defined data centre, hybrid cloud solutions and end-user computing.

* Pivotal – first-quarter revenue grew 8% year-over-year and, most importantly, Pivotal’s subscription revenue was significantly up year-over-year in the first quarter as Pivotal continues its transition to a software subscription business model. Customers are benefiting from leveraging the Pivotal portfolio to build third-platform applications to transform their businesses.