Stock Update: EMC Corporation (NYSE:EMC) – VMware Earnings Preview: Shareholders Uneasy Despite Expected Growth

[at Forbes] – VMware is scheduled to announce its fourth quarter and full year earnings on Tuesday, January 26. At the beginning of Q4, tech giant Dell announced that it would acquire VMware’s majority owner EMC in a $67 billion acquisition. Dell management intended to keep VMware a publicly traded company, retaining an approximately 28% stake in VMware. VMware’s shareholders have reacted negatively to both the acquisition news, the introduction of a tracking stock related to VMware, and future plans by EMC that included a capital-intensive joint venture Virtustream with VMware. Consequently, VMware’s stock … Read more on this. EMC Corporation (EMC) , valued at $46.49B, opened at $24.37. Looking at the stock, its one day range is $23.95 to $24.37 with the price of the stock fluctuating between $22.66 to $29.24 over the last 52 weeks. EMC shares are currently priced at 13.18x this year’s forecasted earnings, which makes them relatively expensive compared to the industry ’s 7.89x forward p/e ratio. And for income investors, the company pays shareholders $0.46 per share annually in dividends, yielding 1.88%. In a review of the consensus earnings estimate this quarter, 29 sell-side analysts are looking at $0.65 per share, which would be $0.04 worse than the year-ago quarter and a $0.01 sequential decrease. What we find to be interesting is that the full-year EPS estimate of $1.82 is a $0.08 worse when compared to the previous year’s annual results. The quarterly earnings estimate is predicated on a consensus revenue forecast of $7.13 Billion. If reported, that would be a 1.13% increase over the year-ago quarter. More recently, Wells Fargo downgraded EMC from Outperform to Market Perform (Nov 11, 2015). Previously, Stifel downgraded EMC from Buy to Hold. Investors should keep in mind is that the average price target is $29.81, which is 22.32% above where the stock opened this morning. See more in (NYSE:EMC) Similar Articles: Stock Update: EMC Corporation (NYSE:EMC) – VMware’s a Value, Says Jefferies; What Other Choice Is There? Asks Bernstein Company Update: EMC Corporation (NYSE:EMC) – EMC Stock Climbs on Possible Downstream Merger With VMware Stock Update (NYSE:EMC): EMC Rising on re/Code Report it May Merge with VMware