Stock Update (NYSE:EMC): Japan’s NTT Data agrees to buy Dell’s IT services unit for $3 bln

[Reuters] – Japan’s NTT Data Corp said on Monday it has agreed to buy Dell Inc’s information technology consulting division for over $3 billion to expand in North America and bolster its services business. The move will allow U.S. computer maker Dell to trim some of the $43 billion in debt it is taking on to fund its pending cash-and-stock acquisition of data storage provider EMC Corp, a deal worth close to $60 billion. The sale will also offer NTT Data, one of the world’s largest technology services companies, a bigger foothold in the United States, where it is looking to expand in healthcare IT, insurance and financial services consulting. Read more on this. EMC Corporation (EMC) , currently valued at $51.71B, opened this morning at $26.48. Looking at the equity, the company’s one day range is $26.44 to $26.65 and has traded between $22.66 and $28.77 over the past 12 months. EMC shares are currently priced at 14.16x this year’s forecasted earnings, which makes them relatively expensive compared to the industry’s 7.55x earnings multiple. The company pays shareholders $0.46 per share annually in dividends, yielding 1.74%. Consensus earnings for the current quarter by the 29 sell-side analysts covering the stock is an estimate of $0.33 per share, which would be $0.02 better than the year-ago quarter and a $0.02 sequential decrease. Furthermore, our analysis shows the full-year EPS estimate to be $1.87, which would be a $0.05 better when compared to the last year’s annual results. The quarterly earnings estimate is based on a consensus revenue forecast of the current quarter of $5.64 Billion. If realized, that would be a 0.53% increase over the year-ago quarter. In terms of ratings, Maxim Group upgraded EMC from Hold to Buy (Jan 28, 2016). Previously, Wells Fargo downgraded EMC from Outperform to Market Perform. With the above information in mind, readers should note that the average price target is $28.52, which is 7.70% above where the stock opened this morning. See more in (NYSE:EMC) Similar Articles: Market Update (NYSE:IBM): MEDIA ALERT: New IBM Cloud Services Enable Developers to Run Zero-Downtime Updates, Easily Connect to Streaming Twitter Data Company Update (NYSE:EMC): EMC and VMware Reveal New Cloud Services Business Market Update (NYSE:EMC): Dell buying EMC in $67 billion bet on data storage