Good morning, and welcome to the EMC Q1 Earnings Conference Call. All participants are in a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer portion of the call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would like to introduce your host, Mr. Tony Takazawa, VP, Global Investor Relations of EMC. Thank you. You may proceed.

Thank you. Good morning. Welcome to EMC's call to discuss our financial results for the first quarter of 2015. Today, we are joined by EMC's Chairman and CEO, Joe Tucci; David Goulden, EMC Information Infrastructure CEO; and Zane Rowe, EMC's CFO. Joe will begin our discussion with his view of the market environment and EMC's vision, strategy, and execution. Zane will then discuss the consolidated EMC results and some additional details regarding our performance. David will provide some commentary on the EMC Information Infrastructure business, what he has seen in the market, and the Q1 performance. After the prepared remarks, we will then open up the lines to take your questions. We are providing you with our projected financial model for 2015. This model lays out all of the key assumptions and discreet financial expectations that are the foundation of our outlook this year. We hope that you find this model helpful in understanding our assumptions in context and in ensuring that these expectations are correctly incorporated into your models. This model is available as background in today's slides available for download in the Investor Relations section of emc.com. Please note that we will be referring to non-GAAP numbers in today's presentation, unless otherwise indicated. The reconciliation of our non-GAAP comments to our GAAP results can be found in the disclosure in today's press release, supplemental schedules, and the slides that accompany our presentation. In addition, all financial comparisons will be on a year-over-year basis, unless otherwise indicated. As always, the call this morning will contain forward-looking statements, and information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ can be found in EMC's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. With that, it is now my pleasure to introduce Joe Tucci. Joe?

Thank you, Tony. I'd like to begin by welcoming everyone to our Q1 earnings call. Thank you for joining us. Our take on Q1 was mixed. We were pleased that we slightly beat our Q1 non-GAAP EPS Board plan, as we achieved $0.31 per share. On the other hand, we were disappointed that we fell a bit short of our Q1 revenue plan, approximately $75 million short. This $75 million revenue shortfall occurred in our storage business. That said, our storage product backlog did increase by $100 million year-on-year, right on plan. David will give you a lot more color our storage business in a little while, but I want to make it clear that we could have and should have made this revenue plan, and we offer you no excuses. About two-thirds of this miss was due to the fact that we didn't execute as crisply as we normally do. The other third was due to negative geopolitical effects in Russia and China that slowed down bookings. China and Russia aside, we understand what we need to do better, we have taken corrective actions, and David and the team are confident they will meet their FX adjusted board plan for the year. Let me now turn and comment on the IT market, and customer spending trends. Overall, the IT market is pretty much playing out like we thought it would. Customers are very focused on building their new digital agendas, and in effect become true digital enterprises. This digitalization is changing the way enterprises are building their products, the way they service their products, the way they sell, and the way they interface with their customers, partners, and supply chains. As such, more IT spend is being pushed towards this priority. And it goes without saying that in this…

Thanks, Joe. Good morning, everyone. In Q1, EMC consolidated revenue was $5.6 billion, up 2% year-over-year, and up 6% on a constant currency basis. EPS was $0.31. These results were broadly in line with our expectations for the quarter, and earlier outlook for the year. EPS was slightly ahead of our expectations due to favorable gross margin, operational efficiencies, and good cost controls. As expected, and previewed on the last earnings call, EPS was impacted by lower Q1 revenue growth relative to the full year as a result of our fulfillment process changes, as well as the impact of the consolidation of VCE. Revenue was slightly softer than expected due to geographic weakness in China and Russia, a product transition-related pause, and organizational changes to realign our storage business. I want to thank everyone across the broader EMC family for their efforts in delivering these results, and positioning us well for the remainder of the year. On a geographic basis, we grew in all theaters in constant currency. North America grew 5% year-over-year, EMEA was down 2%, and up 5% in constant currency, APJ was up 1%, and Latin America was up 8%; they were up 6% and 14% respectively on a constant currency basis. The incremental FX changes during the quarter did not have a material impact on our quarterly results due to the effectiveness of our hedging program. However, current FX rates are expected to further reduce our 2015 revenue by approximately $400 million. Pivotal Q1 revenue was up 8% year-over-year. As you know, the reported revenue results do not tell the real story, as Pivotal continues to make its transition to a software subscription business model. While subscription revenue was up several hundred percent year-over-year, it was on a very small base. It is indicative of the…

Thanks, Zane. Good morning everyone, and thank you joining us today. Overall storage revenue was flat this quarter, up 3% in constant currency, and grew in constant currency in all theatres. Within this, our level of unshipped orders was on-track with our new fulfilment process, which meant that, as expected, the amounts of unshipped storage product orders grew by $100 million versus Q1 2014. Many key areas of our portfolio continue to show great traction growth, but storage product revenue was approximately $75 million below our expectations due to three factors with roughly equal weighting. The first was weakness in Russia due to the economy and currency headwinds, and also in China due to increased scrutiny of U.S. technology purchases in the government and financial services sectors. The second was due to some customers waiting for an anticipated major product announcement in the high-end of our backup and recovery portfolio. And the third was due to a slower start than we would have liked on the go-to-market side of our business due to the impact of the approximately 1500 positions we eliminated across EMC II in Q1. As we look forward to the rest of the year, we believe our ability to deliver world-class products, services, and solutions will drive storage return to expected growth on a constant currency basis for the year. EMC Information Infrastructure strategy to win in this digital age is to follow a progression that expands from best-of-breed products to a broad storage product portfolio to converge infrastructure and also to solutions. This strategy is designed to help our customers transform the existing application environments and also to capitalize on the third platform of information technology. Within EMC II, our focus has been to evolve our storage portfolio by excelling at newer technologies such as scale-out,…

Thanks, David. Before we open up the lines for your questions, as usual we'll ask you to try and limit yourself to one question including clarifications. This will enable us to take as many questions as possible. We thank you for your cooperation in this matter. Caroline, can we open up the lines for questions, please?

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Shebleef Sharafi from FBN. Your line is open.

Yes, thank you. You said that about two-thirds of the miss was execution related. Can you elaborate on what were the largest execution missteps last quarter and what you have done to resolve them? Thank you.

Hey, Shebly. Yes, good morning. This is David. Let me explain exactly, first of all, make sure we understand kind of what did and didn't happen in the storage. So to make it very clear, the vast majority of our storage business was on track for the quarter, services operating margin, gross margin, most of the product areas, but there are three specific things that caused the $75 million miss shortfall compared to our expectation on storage products. One of them was external. We mentioned the geopolitical factors in China and Russia that was about a third of that. Those of course, we do expect to continue during the year. ': ': ': ': ': ': ': ': ': ': ': ':

Thank you.

Next question please.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Brian Alexander from Raymond James. Your line is open.

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Thank you, Brian. Next question, please.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Amit Daryanani from RBC. Your line is open.

Thanks a lot. David, I was hoping you could just talk a little bit about the core EMC gross margins. They were down pretty substantially, I think year-over-year, 260 basis points. Was this a reflection of the execution issues? And then secondly, are you seeing some impact of gross margins from the total of the XIO installations that are legacy VMAX accounts?

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Thanks.

Just to…

You had one more thing, Amit?

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Actually the XtremeIO gross margin profile is actually quite attractive for a couple of reasons. First of all, it sold as an appliance and hardware/software combined. Secondarily, because it's an appliance model, we start charging maintenance on basically day one for that product. So we don't have to accrue for a multiyear warranty. So over the life cycle of an XtremIO system, the gross margin profile is actually quite good and very comparable to our traditional VMAX, VNX blended margins.

Thank you.

Thanks. Next question please.

Our next question or comment is from Rajesh Ghai from Macquarie. Your line is open.

Hi. Yes, thanks. I had a question on the high-end storage side. Historically, an IBM Refresh has -- Mainframe Refresh has helped you in your high-end business. Why would it be any different this year? And is the high-end still being impacted more by the virtual migration of Hadoop and other workloads to [indiscernible] hardware, or is it more encroachment by all flash [ph] such as your own XtremIO? Thank you.

Thank you. Multipart question; let me break it down. So first of all, the Mainframe is a very small part of the total high-end systems business. So yes, we would expect to get some impact, typically lags by a quarter or so from an IBM refresh, so not a material factor. You wouldn't see it show up in the overall numbers very much. In terms of the dynamics, it's not workload migration, that's an important thing to understand, workloads don't migrate to Hadoop. Hadoop workloads and Big Data workloads are a new class of workloads, and what we are saying is that most of those workloads are being deployed on new systems like an Isilon or an ECS and that is driving growth in that side of the business to the extend there is any migration of workloads in the high-end, some of those migration to all Flash price because I spend a couple of minutes just before explaining only a third of our XtremIO systems are going into replaced workload sitting on either high-end or VNX class system. So don't think of it as all high-end. So, essentially the high-end is more dynamic of a fairly steady install-base, and as we mentioned, actually a number of installed high-end systems has remained relatively constant over the last year or so, and the bigger dynamic is in fact new workloads getting build on new classes of systems that drive things out of our emerging technologies division.

Thanks, Rajesh. Next question please.

Thank you. Our next question or comment is from Steve Milunovich from UBS. Your line is open.

Thank you. Just to be clear, your guidance reduction from $1.98 to $1.91, you view as all currency. But it does assume an improvement in execution and for example you said China and Russia probably were not going to come back. So I am wondering how much risk is in that? And I also had to ask $0.31 was ahead of the Board's plan but the consensus on the Street was $0.36 so I guess earnings management or why the big difference? Maybe VCE was quite a bit larger than we expected?

So Steve, I'll start with that and I think David will probably want to add to that. At least for the quarter it was in line with our internal expectations, and I think David touched on some of the issues we found at least on the revenue side for the quarter. And as we've touched on before, these are backend loaded quarter. So I think there is a fair amount of volatility. And also the performance was a fairly significant part of that. As we look for the remainder of the year, the adjustment we are making is solely due to the difference in currencies. We originally had the Euro at 191, which was the beginning of the year rate, and we've updated our currency rates for March 31, which is -- sorry, $7, so 121 was Euro [ph], and then a $7 which is where we are right now. And we feel quite confident with the plan. I think we've talked about the areas of the execution that we are confident that we can overcome for the remainder of the year.

And Steve, just to add to that, to be clear I mentioned this before, China and Russia we do expect that headwind. Obviously it was about third of the delta in our expectations in the first quarter. We do expect that headwind to continue, and we do expect as I mentioned in answer to the first call, the execution issues are behind us, and we believe there is enough opportunity out there to make that up as go through the rest of the year. So the only difference in the outlook for the year as I mentioned is in fact for the changes to foreign exchange.

Thanks.

Thank you, Steve. Next question please.

Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from Lou Miscioscia from CLSA. Your line is open.

Okay, thank you. Maybe if we could get an update Joe's plans as we think about the whole year and into next. And also at the analyst meeting and also obviously on this call, you talked about possible consolidation. Could you maybe just add a little bit of color to that? Would it possibly be more likely to stay in your core areas of storage or is it possibly going to expand out into new areas where really you don't do as much something maybe in the case of networking or another area of hardware/software? Thank you.

Lou, in your second part of your question there's nothing specific that we want to talk about now. I'm just making a general statement having been around a few years. I do believe on a back of these violent secular shifts there will be opportunities. And I don't want to talk about where we think they might be. And again, we will be very -- only if they're very accretive, only if they would really add value to our shareholders would we even entertain it. Our first and foremost strategy is to continue our string of pearls, which has worked quite well or will work quite well in the case with the new six bets we placed. As far as my personal plans, I'm here. I'm engaged. I'm working hard. The board has got a -- as I said, a robust process in place, and my job is to do my job until the board comes with a new CEO. Then I would agree to help as a chairman for a while, and then watch this company flourish after I leave.

Thank you, good luck.

Thank you.

Next question please.

Thank you. Our next question is from Keith Bachman from Bank of Montreal. Your line is open.

Hi, guys. Thanks. I wanted to ask about the free cash flow generation capability. You are guiding free cash flow to be down year-over-year in '15, more than 18%. Is there any one-time items in there? If you could describe how investors should be thinking about the ongoing ability of EMC to generate free cash flow because the magnitude of decline is pretty significant. It is hard to reconcile the statements that EMC is trying to create shareholder value with free cash flow being down so meaningfully, but if you could describe [ph] any one-time items and how investor should be thinking about the ongoing ability to grow or to not grow free cash flow from this number. Thank you.

Sure, Keith. This is Zane. I'll address it. There is in fact a, call it a one-time or a big shift, in free cash flow that we talked about at the strategic forum and that's with the inclusion of VCE moving the impact of the VCE acquisition into operating cash flow line has roughly a $500 million impact on free cash flow, the way we define free cash flow. We were still very comfortable with the ability for us to generate free cash flow. If you were to look at the shift from the year end to where we are today, we're still confident in our expectation. We're currently expecting $4.1 billion. And the only change has been due to currency. We've also included the VMWare update into our free cash flow line, if you recall David mentioned some tax payments, incremental tax payments on a year-over-year basis. So we still feel very confident in the business and in its ability to generate free cash flow.

All right, thank you.

Next question please.

Thank you, our next question is from Maynard Um from Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Hi, thank you. I just wanted to touch again on exceeding your expectations or coming in line with the Board expectations. I guess, Zane, can you walk us through the shape of the year in terms of the linearity to the EPS guide? And you talked about looking for cost efficiencies but I am wondering whether you are baking in something meaningful here, offsetting some of the China -- the geopolitical issues or do you think there is upside to your outlook as you find some of these cost opportunities? Thanks.

Maynard, you know again I -- and we tried to highlight this just over a month ago as you think about the impact that the fulfillment -- the change in fulfillment process had in our quarterly seasonality. And while we don't guide to the quarter we mentioned that it would be approximately 22%. If you looked at that percent versus our updated guidance you'll see it's roughly 21.8%. And David talked about some of the execution opportunities that we feel we were convinced that we can overcome as it relates to the storage part of the business. The rest of it if you were to look at revenue seasonality through the remainder of the year, we do have a buildup if you looked at the VMWare results and our expectations through the course of the year; you do see some of the incremental growth through the course of the year. We're focused on the business. We feel confident in the pipeline as well as the investments. If you look at the emerging parts of the business we're confident in the growth of those emerging pieces obviously having a larger portion of our EPS growth towards the remainder of the year.

Thanks, Maynard. Next question please.

Our next question comes from Wamsi Mohan from Bank of America. Your line is open.

Yes, thanks, good morning. Zane, the VCE consolidation seems like it drove an incremental $115 million in expenses versus last year just in Q1 alone. So as look for the full year number that is almost $0.04 and I believe on your last call you said that the full-year impact would be roughly that magnitude. So should we think that from here on that there is not an incremental headwind or is there still incremental headwind from VCE?

No, I think you may have slightly overextended the impact on the first quarter. What I did mention is that it was going to be far more, so that you should really think of the $0.04 being our first half impact. So you're close, we would be happy to go through the math, but the impact was more pronounced in the first half, not as significant as $0.04 in the first quarter. So you're close, but it is essentially a first half phenomenon as you incorporate the VCE impact.

And this is David. Just to help clarify the mechanics, so yes, there was always an incremental impact to operating expense from VCE moving into operating expense. But then there's a corresponding reduction to other expense, so obviously we use to consolidate 67-ish percent of the VCE expenses into other income. Now we consolidate 100 into operating expense. So it's the delta between those two that is driving the impact. I think you're just looking at just the gross amount that is sitting inside of operating expenses.

Thanks, David.

Thank you, Wamsi. Next question please.

Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from Nehal Chokshi from Maxim. Your line is open.

Yes, thank you. For Pivotal, I am increasingly inclined to believe this can indeed be your next VMWare i.e., generating $2 billion to $3 billion of free cash flow per year 10 years down the road. I know that is really long-term thinking but it seems like a significant portion of the value proposition for Pivotal is enabling -- utilizing any platform. Is this the right way to think about the long-term picture here and pending the answer, I will have a follow-up question.

I didn't quite understand the question, Nehal, can you do that again?

Sure. Looking at Pivotal being your next VMWare, the key pillar of that is enablement of Big Data consumption on any platform. Is that the right way to think about that? And I will have a follow-up question pending the answer here.

Yes. At the base level of Pivotal is Cloud Foundry, and the -- which is developers platform, and the -- I think what Cloud Foundry is trying to do more than anything else is basically say you develop your app once and then you have portability across the popular Cloud platforms out there whether it would be VMWare based platform or an OpenStack based platform, Amazon based platform, an Azure platform or the next one on this list would be Google platform. So yes, the answer is yes.

Okay. So the follow-up question is what is the risk that provided that this does indeed work out that you are ending up cannibalizing your existing strong free cash flow streams from information infrastructure as well as virtual infrastructure?

Well, if you take the VMWare side, you see the moves that the last set of announcements they're making around VIO, VMWare Integrated OpenStack around what they are announcing with how they are -- have this really slick implementation of containers. You look what David is doing in EMC II around Elastic Cloud Storage, around ViPR, around ScaleIO, around Isilon, these all are aimed at that new world, that the same world that Pivotal has aimed at. So we see -- this is again why I'm so excited about the set of assets we built across this Federation because when you add layer one plus layer two plus layer three, and you go to a customer, you're much, much more relevant, have a much better chance of winning, and that's why we went through that, not by name, but that very robust list of customers who are working with where they've entrusted us to help them as they build their digital agenda, and then of course that digital agenda ends up being on a cloud, and we have an equally robust list of customers there that rely on us for IT transformation to a hybrid cloud. So that's the secret sauce that I've been trying to get across to everybody.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Thanks. We have time for one more question, and then we'll have a few concluding comments from Joe.

Thank you. And our final question comes from Katy Huberty from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Yes, thanks. Given the strength of the all flash array market, can you just remind us the timing of DSSD product coming to market and how you plan to position that relative to XtremIO? Thank you.

Okay. Yes, this is David. Let me take that. First of all, DSSD coming to market later this year, we couldn't be more excited about that. I did mention though I expect to see some exciting news around XtremIO at EMC World as well. So the flash agenda is alive, well and strong, and they're positioned quite differently. Basically XtremIO is a SAN attached Block Storage Device designed to make existing applications run much, much faster. DSSD is aimed more at the NextGen in-memory third platform applications. It's well-handled. Protocols like Hadoop as well as the native protocols designed to be basically an extension of memory and the applications that we're using the assistance for are actually quite different. So they're both based upon flash technology, but the applications they are aimed for are different and quite complementary. So couldn't be more excited about the flash agenda. You'll hear a lot more about XtremIO in two weeks time, a little bit more about DSSD as well.

Again, let me thank everybody for joining us. The point we tried to make, get across is there is a huge inextricably linked business and IT transformation taking place right now. A transformation like this will have winners and losers, as this transformation plays out. We have and are making the right investments, and we have the strategy, the technology, the people, and the customer permission to be a winner. And I assure you as we play hard to win, we will keep a sharp eye on costs. David and his team are looking forward to EMC World, the week after next, and there will be a good number of anticipated and important product announcements made there. This conference will also have an investor track. So hopefully we'll see many of you there. And again, the management team and I are very confident of our future, and our ability to create shareholder value. So once again, thank you for being with us, and I hopefully see you in two weeks.