EMC reports higher profit, raises buyback

BOSTON (Reuters) - EMC Corp (EMC.N), the No. 1 maker of corporate data storage equipment, reported quarterly profit that beat Wall Street forecasts and boosted a stock buyback on Thursday.

It said third-quarter net income rose to $492.9 million, or 23 cents a share, from $283.7 million, or 13 cents a share, a year earlier.

The company said it had profit excluding items of 17 cents per share.

Revenue rose 17 percent to $3.3 billion.

Analysts expected it to report profit of 17 cents per share on revenue of $3.2 billion.

Sales are being fueled by growth in software products acquired over the past few years.

EMC's highest-profile asset is VMware Inc (VMW.N), a business software maker that it took public in an initial public offering in August. VMware now has a stock market value of more than $40 billion, making it the world's fourth-largest publicly held software maker.

EMC, which owns 86 percent of VMware, has a market value of about $49 billion.

Chief Financial Officer David Goulden said in a statement that the company has increased a previously announced stock buyback plan from $1 billion to $2 billion.

He also reiterated a results forecast made in July.

In January the company said it expected to earn at least 64 cents per share on revenue of at least $12.7 billion in 2007.

In July it altered the language slightly, saying it expected to earn more than 64 cents per share on revenue of more than $12.7 billion.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle)