NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) change in strategy working as it topped predictions again

The Sunnyvale, Calif.,-based NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) stock move up over 1% in the extended session Wednesday after the company announced its first-quarter earnings result topping all predictions.

This wasn’t came as shocker as storage-appliance maker revealed its fifth beat in a row, and issued in-line sales outlook for its current quarter.

For the last three month period, company posted net income of $136 million, or 49 cents a share, on revenue of $1.33 billion, up 2% year over year. Apart from stock-based rewards and other items, the company reported 62 cents a share, a 35% rise over a year ago period.

“The revenue momentum continues to be very good, driven by our success in the all-flash array market, the convergent infrastructure market, and expanding rage of hybrid cloud solutions,” NetApp Chief Executive George Kurian said in a brief telephone interview after the results were released Wednesday.

NetApp Inc.(NASDAQ:NTAP) not just topped its own first-quarter earnings outlook it also managed to beat analysts’ predictions. Analysts were predicting earnings of 37 cents a share, and sales of $1.32 billion, while the company itself had projected earnings of 30 cents to 38 cents per share.

Meanwhile the company issued second-quarter sales guidance of $1.31 billion to $1.46 billion, while FactSet analysts predict sales of $1.37 billion.

Furthermore Kurian, who took the charge of the company back in 2015, has changed the company’s path and embraced storage systems entirely based on flash memory, which do not have moving parts, unlike disk drives.

Moreover NetApp (NTAP), was considered as a pioneer in creating separate storage appliances, but was behind rivals to embrace the flash memory trend. Firms like Nimble Storage, which was acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise earlier this year and Pure Storage paved the way.