Thursday, June 2, 2011

Tucci: EMC open to acquisition, if a buyer can afford it

By Kyle Alspach

A buyout of EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) by another firm could be possible if that was the desire of shareholders, CEO Joe Tucci said during an investment conference in New York Wednesday.

But few companies would be able to take on such a large acquisition, Tucci said during the conference. “We are pretty close to $60 billion now in market cap, so just by pure size, there is not a lot of companies” that could do it, he said in transcribed remarks. “So it’s possible, and I’m not — if it makes sense for the shareholders, there is not a bone in my body that’ll block that. But I really believe we’ve got to play our own game.”

Tucci’s comments during the conference, held by Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., followed a question on whether EMC would be a standalone company in five years. The Hopkinton-based data storage giant saw revenue of $4.6 billion in the first quarter, while profit reached $477.1 million.

Tucci also reiterated during the conference that he’s looking to internal candidates to fill his job when he steps down after 2012. He has been president and CEO of EMC since 2001, and chairman since 2006, and previously said in 2009 that he would remain as CEO for just three more years.

“I’ve got some insiders that I’m grooming that I think could be ready, and I don’t want to hold anybody back from that next step,” Tucci said.

He did not elaborate on names, but in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in 2009, Tucci said three possible successors were Pat Gelsinger, president and COO of EMC Information Infrastructure Products; Howard Elias, president and COO of EMC Information Infrastructure and Cloud Services; and David Goulden, executive vice president and CFO. But Tucci stressed there was no guarantee it would be one of those three.

During the investment conference, Tucci said he may become an executive chairman for two years after stepping down as CEO and could follow that with a non-executive chairman role for another two years.

On Wednesday, EMC’s California-based virtualization infrastructure business VMware Inc. announced that it bought Socialcast, a social collaboration startup in San Francisco.

Last month, VMware agreed to acquire Shavlik Technologies, a cloud-based IT management software provider based in New Bright, Minn. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.