NetApp CEO Replacement Trumps Earnings (NTAP)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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NTAP LogoNetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTAP) just gave its earnings for its first quarter of Fiscal-2010, and it is a mixed bag.  The storage and data management company said that non-GAAP earnings were $0.22 EPS and said revenues fell 4% from last year’s Q1 to $838 million.  Thomson Reuters had estimates of $0.20 EPS and $828.3 million in revenues.  A key management change is trumping earnings today.

NetApp is not being grossly aggressive nor overly confident by any measure.  It went as far as to say, “Given the reduced visibility caused by the recent changes in the macroeconomic environment, NetApp will not be providing revenue guidance for the second quarter of fiscal year 2010.”

Its only guidance was estimates of non-GAAP gross margins for the second quarter of fiscal year 2010 to be between 62.5% and 63.0%.  As far as income, it only said non-GAAP other income for the second quarter of fiscal
year 2010 to remain at similar levels on non-GAAP operating expenses of $425 million.

On top of earnings came a more important announcement that may signal a change in the company.  The company announced that Tom Georgens, NetApp’s president and chief operating officer, is succeeding Dan Warmenhoven as CEO.  It noted that this is in the culmination of a management succession process.

Shares closed up $0.04 at $22.89 today in regular trading, yet shares have traded down under $21.75 and are back around the $22.00 mark now in the after-hours session.

JON C. OGG
August 19, 2009

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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