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Dell Technologies Inc. (DELL)

Q4 2008 Earnings Call· Tue, Jan 27, 2009

$205.79

-0.01%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome and thank you for standing by. (Operator Instructions) Today’s conference call is being recorded. If you have any objections you may disconnect at this time. Now I will turn the meeting over to Mr. Tony Takazawa, Vice President Investor Relations. You may begin.

Tony Takazawa

President

Thank you, Vicky. Good morning, welcome to EMC’s call to discuss our financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2008. Today we will be joined by Joe Tucci, EMC Chairman, President and CEO, and David Goulden, EMC Executive Vice President and CFO. David will provide a few comments about the results that we released this morning, he will highlight some of EMC's activities this quarter, and discuss some modeling assumptions for 2009. Joe will then spend some time discussing his view of what is happening in the market, EMC’s execution of the strategy and how EMC is positioned going forward. After the prepared remarks we will then open up the lines to take your questions. I would like to point out that we will be highlighting various non-GAAP numbers in today's presentation. The reconciliation of our non-GAAP comments to our GAAP results can be found in the disclosure today, in our press release, supplemental schedules, and the slides that accompany our presentation. All of these are available for download within the Investor Relations section of EMC.com. 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 US Securities and Exchange Commission. Lastly, I will note that an archive of today's presentation will be available following the call. With that, it's now my pleasure to introduce David Goulden. David?

David Goulden

Management

Thanks, Tony. Good morning. Thank you for joining us today. Against the backdrop of a tough economic environment, EMC achieved Q4 revenue growth of 5%, non-GAAP EPS growth of 7%, and free cash flow growth of 9%. For the full year, EMC achieved revenue growth of 12%, non-GAAP EPS growth of 14%, and free cash flow growth of 17%. We are pleased that our execution in performance in 2008, and we achieved many of the goals we set for the company last January. We generated all-time record revenue for the breadth and depth of our solution portfolio, which is aligned with key IT priorities, and to the strength of our go-to-market model. By expanding our geographic reach and investing in new markets, we generated more revenue outside the US than ever before. As a result of our R&D investments each of our business units (inaudible) strengthening the competitiveness of our solutions and extending our market leadership across the board. We effectively reinvested in our business for future growth while managing our spending carefully and delivering non-GAAP EPS leverage. We used our cash wisely to make acquisitions for our technology portfolio and to new markets and to repurchase stock, while end of the year with the most cash in the company’s history. Our 2008 results reflect the continued hard work to our organization and the strengthening of our business model. In 2009, we are very focused on managing our business to successfully navigate this tough economic environment. And towards this, we have already taken proactive measures to reduce our overall cost structure and improve the future efficiencies of our global operations. Over the last several years we have been expanding EMC’s total addressable market, significantly diversifying our customer base, and strengthening and expanding our business partnerships. We have built a strong…

Joe Tucci

Chairman

Thanks, David. I would like to also extend my welcome to everyone on today’s call. Thanks for joining us. Overall, given the tough economic climate the downturn in capital spending and the high degree of uncertainty that has permeated the market, I believe EMC had a very respectable Q4. My thanks to our teams across the world who delivered in these volatile times. Commenting briefly on the full year, I am disappointed that we missed our $15 billion revenue target by a little over $100 million. We were well on track through Q3 to meet this important goal, but after 21 consecutive quarters of double digit revenue growth, in Q4 our revenue tapered off to 5% as we felt the impact of the economic storm. I am, however, quite pleased at despite the shortfall in the pipeline we achieved our annual non-GAAP EPS goal of $1.04 and exceeded our cash flow for shared goal of $1.15, which came in at $1.24. Now turning to 2009, as far as the economy is concerned I don't have too much to add. But, for sure, you are all witnessing a severe economic crisis being played out across the globe. Where I would like to add some color based on literally hundreds of meetings and conversations I have had with our customers is on a 2009 IT spending front. We have already indicated that we expect overall IT spending to be down this year. On a macro level, customers are focused on driving their own restructuring, reducing costs, driving complexity out of their environment, implementing their really strategic initiatives, and while doing therapy is they want to assure they are positioning themselves to take advantage of the many upcoming technology trends, such as the virtualized beta center of the future. As part and parcel…

Tony Takazawa

President

Thank you, Joe, before we open up the lines for your questions. Let me ask you to try and limit yourself to one question including clarification. We thank you all for your cooperation in this matter. Vicky, can we open up the lines for question, please.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from Toni Sacconaghi, Sanford Bernstein. You may ask your question. Toni Sacconaghi – Sanford Bernstein: Yes, thank you and good morning. It sounds like you have a relatively pessimistic forecast for IT spending and one that cost that cost for further deceleration in 2009 to help us understand, sort of how you see things on a dynamic level. Can you give us a sense of what you thought IT spending was in Q4 of '08 given that it sounds like you calling for it to be down about minus 10% in the first half of '09? And can you help us to understand where your backlog going into Q1 compares versus usual year, typical years, I think typically you have about $100 million or little more entering Q1, can you comment on that as well?

Joe Tucci

Chairman

Yes, I'll start and may be David could try many your, Toni, this is Joe. I haven't really given any real thought to what spending was in 2008 believe or not we spend a lot of time looking forward. As I said, read a lot of surveys that the industry has done and as I said, I talked to hundreds and hundreds of customers in groups and individually and most customers are telling us at least for the first half of this year, they are going to be very cautious and are expecting declines and it’s not, and that's what we are hearing. I do not really think even though we gave our best guess, I do not really think what we are seeing for the year has a tremendous amount of merit because it's just not that kind of visibility. But I do think what we are saying has a lot of merit for the next four to six months. And I am convinced Toni, that we're going to see, in that mid to high digit decline in overall IT spending and I said, I do believe that where the products that we have to kind of like to like so where IT spending real happen and we'll fair better than most. Based on yearly results for Q4 it looks like that’s exactly what happened if the reports that I have seen we did fair better than most. And like hope we expect that to continue. But there's definitely going to see a deterioration of what we saw -- we started to see this kind of storm really taking some foothold in Q4. And I think it will be a harder storm in Q1 and Q2. I just believe that, that’s why I said. So as far as our comments even though they were for the year, I'd apply them more to the first half of the year because it's just that uncertain. David, you want to backlog or little color on it.

David Goulden

Management

Yes, I just, one more comment on the first half of course, Toni, we did mention, we saw a little bit of budget which we say, we need to coming in to Q4 kind of get to $4 billion, which was a much bigger sequential growth from Q3 to Q4 most people felt that we could achieve, we saw that, I think number of people saw that as well, across the industry it adds a bit more pressure on the first half as well. With people kind of looking at their budgets going forward Q4 into Q1, and to Q2. Then on the backlog side, we have a little bit less in total backlog then you'd normally have coming out of a Q4 but not whole lot less, it’s actually little stronger on the software side, little less on the storage side, but not materially different. Toni Sacconaghi – Sanford Bernstein: Thank you.

Tony Takazawa

President

Thanks, Tony. Next question please.

Operator

Operator

David Bailey, Goldman Sachs. You may ask your question. David Bailey – Goldman Sachs: Great, good morning, thank you very much. Can you give us some idea about how much of the $350 million in savings you expect from the restructuring, will drop to the bottom-line? And how much will be absorbed in either pricing or investments in other areas?

Joe Tucci

Chairman

David, let me take that. We've taken these cost reductions really to a -- approve to business for the overall efficiency when things return but also to have protect our operating margins in 2009. So, we expect our operating margins to kind of hold up well. In 2009, you had given the combination of this cost coming out and also what will inevitably be more pricing pressures kind of more cautious during the year. So, I think we are looking at on an overall operating margin, trying to stay as closest as we can to 2008, but given the pricing pressure and the slowdown in the marketplace. I should not look for a whole lot of leverage in 2009 concurrent these cost reductions. However, they do set off age much lower when things improve. And I'll just say during the course of the year you will see a nice sequential improvement from Q1 going forward assuming that revenues continue to increase sequentially because the cost reductions kick in wall-to-wall in the second half of the year while keeping the rest of our costs flat. So, you should see some nice leverage during the course of the year. Which sets ourselves well during 2010. David Bailey – Goldman Sachs: And when you talk about flat operating margin or roughly flat operating margin, is that on a GAAP or a non-GAAP basis?

Joe Tucci

Chairman

That would be, everything I am talking about on a non-GAAP basis. That would be excluding those $0.12 and things I talk to you about with impact our all full year on year compared. David Bailey – Goldman Sachs: Okay, thank you very much.

Tony Takazawa

President

Thanks, David. Next question please.

Operator

Operator

Shebly Seyrafi of Calyon. You may ask your question. Shebly Seyrafi – Calyon Securities: Yes, thank you very much. Lot of a moving parts from the OpEx line, if you compare on, I am sorry, add R&D and SG&A for 2008 you get around $6.3 billion. How do you see that shaking out for full year 2009 considering that its leverage the back half?

David Goulden

Management

Yes, Shebly, as we said that the $350 million reduction is from our 2008 cost base. So, you should see some real year-on-year reductions in OpEx. Bear in mind I said about a third of those reductions will hit the cost in line with two-thirds hitting the OpEx line. So, look for that when you look at the full year results must actually have less absolute dollars which of course you all mean to offering things down because as you know during 2008 OpEx grew during the year. Shebly Seyrafi – Calyon Securities: So, to be clear rough around say $200 million less from the 6.3, is that fair?

David Goulden

Management

That’s a fair. That’s a fair, assumption. Shebly Seyrafi – Calyon Securities: Thank you.

Tony Takazawa

President

Thanks, Shebly. Next question please.

Operator

Operator

Amit Daryanani of RBC Markets. You may ask your question. Amit Daryanani – RBC Capital Markets: Thanks. Good morning, guys. Given your comments regarding in sort of '09 budgets just being a little bit more backend loaded. If you look at historical seasonality in the March clearances and sales are going to be down high single digits or so, but I think in the old note to time from low to mid teens. Is that the way you should be thinking about in the first half of '09?

David Goulden

Management

Well, I think that we said that, we're going to expect to see a large than normal seasonal declines in revenue from Q4 to Q1 that we saw before example, you just so came see as a benchmark excluding the VMware we sure about and a 11% sequential decline in revenues last year Q4 to Q1. So, obviously looking for something larger than this year based upon what we spoke about in terms of market trends.

Joe Tucci

Chairman

Yes, we were pretty clear and we ended up being exactly right that we thought they would be what I called, I turned if you recall last call a mini budget flush. So, I expected there not to be a budget flush as usual, but I expected to be something and we did see and we did that's exactly what we saw in Q4. And obviously in Q1 we do not expect to see that mini budget flush so to speak. So, that would bode that was probably see a bigger than normal drop up within Q4 and Q1. As many customers out there they still do not have their budgets and there is a lot just in time budgets being done. But like everything else in life you get custom to whatever environment you are in and I expect this as we progressed through the year, the companies will get their restructuring behind them, get them the grips and understand that IT is a way to improve productivity which every company is going to strive to do and that’s the trends I expect that this industry will follow this year and that’s kind of where we are guiding.

Tony Takazawa

President

Thanks, Amit. Next question please. Amit Daryanani – RBC Capital Markets: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Katie Huberty of Morgan Stanley. You may ask your question. Katie Huberty – Morgan Stanley:

David Goulden

Management

Yes, Katie, thank you for the question. If you look at our non-GAAP results for the EMC Information Infrastructure, you do see a slight reduction in gross margins from Q3 to Q4 sequentially. And basically, all that is accounted for by a combination of currency and the slightly higher mix of Iomega revenues. So that definitely, if you normalize our gross margins for currency and Iomega revenues mix, they would be flat from Q3 to Q4. 2009, obviously, anybody's guess, because rates are going to move all over the place. If I look at that the spot rates today, last week, probably somewhere between two to three point headwinds on the revenue line. Katie Huberty – Morgan Stanley: Great, thanks.

Joe Tucci

Chairman

Thanks, Katie. Next question please?

Operator

Operator

Keith Bachman, Bank of Montreal. You may ask your question. Keith Bachman – Bank of Montreal: Yes, thank you. Number one, Joe, Dell, I think you said, was about 25% of CLARiiON revenues. That seems to still be weak. How do you anticipate that that's going to unfold during the first half of onto your '09? Would you expect to see a deceleration of contribution from Dell, or is this going to be a steady state? And then I want to follow-up with an FX question if I could.

Joe Tucci

Chairman

No, I don't expect to see a deceleration or a less percentage from Dell. We have worked hard with Dell. Mike and I have worked personally, and we believe we have our relationship back on track. While the year-on-year was down, you saw that sequentially from Q3 to Q4, we did have improvement. We have tremendous amount of activities and respect between the two companies, and we now believe we have come to a methodologies and processes in the field, which will help us continue to work together better together. And as you saw, Mike and I were in New York recently and we extended our partnership for five more years. Keith Bachman – Bank of Montreal: Right.

Joe Tucci

Chairman

And both talked about really working better together and capturing growth, so I would expect that to get better if anything not worse. Keith Bachman – Bank of Montreal: Okay. If I could just follow-up from the past comment on FX then, Joe, you did mentioned that you saw IT budgets would be down high single-digits. And then, EMC, or your thought would be better. Are you with incremental FX pressure be added to that? So, in other words, the 200, 300 basis points headwinds, obviously that's going to move around quite a bit, but is that an incremental add to how we should be thinking about revenues on a year-over-year basis for first half of '09?

Joe Tucci

Chairman

Yes. Just to be clear to you, I said mid-to-high. Keith Bachman – Bank of Montreal: Right.

Joe Tucci

Chairman

Because there is just that degree of uncertainty, right? So that's a pretty wide span, I understand. Keith Bachman – Bank of Montreal: Okay.

Joe Tucci

Chairman

You know, because mid could mean 4 and mid could mean 9, I mean a hike could mean 9, so that's a pretty wide spread. And I am not saying at 4 and 9, I just expect it is going to be down. So, do not go to just a hike. Secondly, you have the bad FX rebates, and some FX assumptions, but I wouldn't say we did any kind of massive betting on which way the dollar or the euro was going to go. Keith Bachman – Bank of Montreal: Okay. FX is one of the factors that's driving a -- view of what IT spending might look like on year-on-year. So, we have got some FX assumption baked in that case.

Joe Tucci

Chairman

Yes. We have put on some assumption, but not widely different than where it is today. Keith Bachman – Bank of Montreal: Okay, thank you.

David Goulden

Management

Okay, thanks. Next question please?

Operator

Operator

Brian Freed, Morgan Keegan. You may ask your question. Brian Freed – Morgan Keegan: Yes. Good morning. Thanks for taking my call. If you look at your kind of thoughts around the IT budget, could you give us a little more color by segment in terms of your software services and hardware? Yes, I know, it is a little tough, but the amalgamated view here of the mid-to-high, what are the relative areas of strength and weakness as you see it? And how do you think it's going to compare to statement of the 2000 to 2001 one timeframe?

Joe Tucci

Chairman

I don't know. From a growth perspective, we will vary by our product. As I have said before and I will say again, everybody would be affected including VMware, including EMC. But that being said when you look at the sales priorities are, I don't think is product out that more relates in the VMware. So, obviously I think that will be at the top of from a product perspective, security is strong, storage information are going to grow, so coming in that way. And I think, you are looking a little bit like growth hardware and software. So, I would say that probably in a short-term, because we have more backlog in services and software holds it better because software got the just the sport side of it. We have to do more book, ship and billing which is on license side for software, and on a license side for storage and security et, cetera, and that will probably get impacted more so. So we get pretty balance, and that's kind of where I see it. Brian Freed – Morgan Keegan: Great, and if you wouldn't mind one quick clarification. As we look all the moving parts in your model, do you view non-GAAP as really the best measure of your performance going forward given the changes in accounting standard and charges on GAAP?

David Goulden

Management

Yes, absolutely do. I think there is lot of reaction off of that. Obviously, we give you all the data, you can come to your own conclusions, but we feel very strongly, that's a case.

Joe Tucci

Chairman

Thanks, Brian. Next question please?

Operator

Operator

Bill Choi of Jefferies. You may ask you question. Bill Choi – Jefferies: Okay, thanks. I just want to get little more color about Symmetrix. Obviously, this is your high-end system. Could you confirm that this product was indeed actually down sequentially? And when you think about customers' unwillingness to do major projects, how do you look at seasonality for Symmetrix going into Q1? And what would you expect the new SIM upgrade to do, and is that can be around September? Thanks.

David Goulden

Management

We talked about the seasonality, SIM was up sequentially from Q3 to Q4, just not quite strongly as it normally is. The year-on-year decline as I said before, it was really compared to a very tough Q4 year ago, which is our first full quarter on VMX4 access. If I kind of look at the Symmetrix performance for the quarter, a little bit more weakness in international than in the US, eventually in Europe we saw things slowdown rapidly during the quarter. You see our growth rates changing in total by substantially, and that's where the biggest impact was upon SIM.

Joe Tucci

Chairman

I just want to comment on when the new SIM is coming, but I'll just say it is coming.

David Goulden

Management

Thanks Bill. Bill Choi – Jefferies: Okay.

David Goulden

Management

Next question please?

Operator

Operator

Mark Moskowitz of JP. Morgan. You may ask your question. Mark Moskowitz – JPMorgan: Yes, good morning. Thank you. I want to learn a little more if you could, Joe about the SAN versus NAS acceleration here in terms of your EMC business. How much of the NAS acceleration is being driven by share gains versus may be a market shift by your customers? And if so, what reasons of verticals are shifting more towards NAS versus SAN that is recurring?

Joe Tucci

Chairman

The thing that we are doing here, which is driving our businesses, we are shipping more and more of our products that have, what we call, unified storage. So, you buy the product and you can basically have fiber channel SAN, you could have ISCSI 10, or you could have network attached. So, if you think of a customer, especially in the midsize market, you say well. You have the database and that looks great on SAN, and don't you have some file and print work for NAS, rather than two systems we are selling. We are selling like combined to it and that is just really hotter than hot. You could see that for the year or that product line at over 40% growth and that's kind of -- you will see a lot more that in the future. I mentioned that is one of the areas that we are going to expand that you could expect new product announcements, so I do not think there is a NAS or SAN versus NAS shift going on at all, but I think it's basically there is a big shift to what we are calling is unified storage.

David Goulden

Management

Thanks, Mark. Next question, please?

Operator

Operator

Kaushik Roy of Pacific Growth Equities. You may ask your question. Kaushik Roy – Pacific Growth Equities: Thank you. Can you comment on the current pricing environment and the impact on the gross margin maybe in 2009? I asked this because you remember at 2001, 2002 pricing and gross margins took a hard hit, so how you do see gross margin is playing out in 2009? Can you quantify the impact in any way?

Joe Tucci

Chairman

Let me make a statement first. I remembered back in 2001, 2002 coming into that time, our policy and our practice was the price 50% to 100% more than our competitors. So yes, we had a lot margin impact, right? But we think we are very competitively priced, very value priced, so we don't expect near the compression this time we had last time. I'll let David comment specifically but obviously in tougher times, we always do have more pricing pressure but on the other side we make it sure that we do a lot on the cost side to help bolster as much of that as we can Dave would you want to?

David Goulden

Management

Let me give you a little bit more color upon how margins go through in the quarter. I gave you one metric so let me drill down a little bit upon that. So margins held it very well during the quarter as I mentioned if you back-out effects if you normalize for Iomega which had a slightly bigger quarter in Q3 and Q4. Not only were storage volumes flat but storage product margin were also very flat as well quarter-on-quarter. So given that Q4 was a bit of a storm and that was budget flush but clearly people were looking for pricing pressure and we were able to respond to that we are getting cost out of props and we'd have one quarter now when margins have held it pretty well during this storm and hopefully we'll continue to do well as we get more cost savings through the programs to help us get maintain our competitive stance. Kaushik Roy – Pacific Growth Equities: Okay great thanks.

Tony Takazawa

President

Thanks, Kaushik Next question please.

Operator

Operator

Ben Reitzes of Barclays Capital. You may ask your question. Benjamin Reitzes – Barclays Capital: Yes, good morning, thanks. I just wanted to talk about your guidance coming, sorry lack of guidance but some of the comments you said, given IT spend and where storage could go and then your ability to gain shares it sounds like you are kind of saying given currency, revenue declined in '09 for EMC its best amount of down low single digits and then given the cost cutting is offset a lots by accounting and pricing may be have EPS down a little. I want to know if you agree with that and then also can you just talk about how the '09 shifts by quarters made differ versus prior years, usually you have like 22% and whatever it is in the 1Q, I mean should we look for a big difference in skew as well. So if you can comment on the first kind of conjecture I made on the guidance and then the quarterly skew that be great.

David Goulden

Management

Yes, Ben let me start and then Joe, could may be add a few comments. So I think when you look at the EPS let's keep the conversation at the non-GAAP levels kind of ease on the what's going also happens a year-on-year we told you to about $0.12 of kind of headwinds this is going to impact just through those core items and then of course on top of that you've got the impact of the operational performance offset by the cost savings. So you got at least a $0.12 negative swing on the non-GAAP EPS plus or minus whatever we get out of the business operation excluding those things. So directionally you are absolutely correct. And then from a seasonality point of view, I think the answer to the question, the short answer is yes. I mean we've really said that we expect the higher revenue proportionately in the second half that we get in the first half normally. And then that’s going to be because of the keeping expenses flat and driving both the savings from the 350 into second half. It's also going to produce more leverage on the non-GAAP EPS line then you normally get between the Q1 and Q4 as well. So you are going to see a lot of leverage in the model Q1 and the first half is clearly going, it is going to be toughest for us. And it’s going to have the kind of lowest revenue because of the seasonality. It's going to have total of cost savings in there, the second half should look a whole lot better from revenue and an EPS point of view again assuming that our focus is on recovering growth rates in the second half plays out.

Tony Takazawa

President

Thanks Ben. Next question please.

Operator

Operator

Brian Marshall, Broadpoint AmTech, you may ask your question. Brian Marshall – Broadpoint AmTech: Good morning, guys. Thank you, question with regards to the deceleration that we saw in the Semetric's line, sort of relative to your mid-range offering and given the fact that we are seeing a re-price on the Semetric's coming up in the next three quarters. Is there a point where the mid-range actually becomes the largest product category from a mixed perspective of your storage products?

David Goulden

Management

I do not know. It certainly could, they are pretty close rate this quarter. You saw, we think this re-price on Semetrics is something else and different than a lot of you might expect. So in difference to Semtrics there is quite a future there for sure but the mixture keeps growing especially as I said this move to unify storage is incredibly strong. Brian Marshall – Broadpoint AmTech: And just as a follow-up, in terms of software attach rates and service attach rates, there, would you expect any material differences to those lines, going through '09?

David Goulden

Management

The service attach rates, I think, continually going up and the software attach rates are good and we are just basically selling solutions now, as you could see, it’s kind of all when you buy it customers are buying the bundle which includes hardware and software, if you look at the company in total, right? And this is excluding VMware. We have about 8,000 engineers doing software. We have about 400 engineers doing -- little less than 400 engineers doing hardware. So, what’s happening is we are selling the bundle and are margins on the stores are going up and I do not think that they are going up solely because of the hardware, I think they are going up because of the value that we are building in the software. But, we are selling it together as a collective group and since we have got catalog for our sales force more neutral. So you can just sell list rather than selling hardware and software. Our margins have gone up and customer satisfaction with us has gone up. So, it’s been a great move. I know it’s caused all of you angst but I really do not understand it because you think it’s because of the 400, less than 400 engineers we have, building hardware and that these revenues are going or you think it’s more because we have 8,000 engineers building software. And so it’s all in there and we watch gross margins like a hawk and on storage they have a very good trend.

Tony Takazawa

President

Okay thanks Brian. Next question, please.

Operator

Operator

Chris Whitmore of Deutsche Bank, you may ask your question. Chris Whitmore – Deutsche Bank: Thanks, just a follow-up on the gross margin question. Product gross margins were down about two and a half points year-on-year and the quarter where revenue actually grew, if sales on the product side are down in that mid-single digit range, what is your expectation for gross margin. Can you expand them in 2009? Thanks.

Joe Tucci

Chairman

I think Chris; gross margins are going to be under pressure in 2009. Not so much from volume but really from the customer pricing pressure. We see more pressure in the market right now from customers than we do from competition. That is a double-edged sword. Customers are asking us to kind of give them pricing opportunities and then they are also offering us a bigger piece of that share of their spend in their response for that. So, I do not expect to see margins to increase in 2009. I do think that -- we are going to continue to bring cost out of the products. All the products that we introduced have a lower cost base than the prior products. It's further opportunities for us. There is going to be a lot of opportunities towards continuing to drive prices down from our supply chain. So, we are going to work all those things. I would not look for expanded margins in 2009.

Tony Takazawa

President

Thanks, Chris. We have time for one more question and then Joe, will have a few concluding comments.

Operator

Operator

Our last question comes from Bill Shope of Credit Suisse. Bill Shope – Credit Suisse: Okay thanks guys. So, looking at your outlook for IT spending maybe more backend loaded than usual in '09, would you say that storage spending should be more or less backend loaded than other segments despite spending? I understand you think storage spending will be a bit more stable than the rest of the IT environment but can you give us an idea for the backend loaded nature of storage spending?

Joe Tucci

Chairman

Well, I think, couple of things. When you look at our product road map, we certainly have a stronger product portfolio in the second-half of the year as these re-prices come up. So that'll help, that kind of forum. But, I do think storage will be a little better but it will be subject to the same trends, to answer your question directly and honestly, Bill. Bill Shope – Credit Suisse: Okay thank you.

Joe Tucci

Chairman

Okay, well again thank you for joining us today and I want to leave you with a kind of closing. So, I think, in 2009 for sure as you all know we are operating in a very tough and uncertain environment but I also want you know we are operating from strength. We have innovative leading timely products backed by a winning strategy and of course we are going to share their strategies with you later this quarter. We have the cash in the balance sheet to stay to course. We have terrific talent that has a positive attitude and a leadership team in place to drive success and we have a very large customer base that truly values EMC and we should be a beneficiary of this spike in quality. So, again thank you for joining us and we will see you later this quarter.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may disconnect at this time.