EMC seeks calm investors as shares plunge

EMC will try to reassure nervous investors and analysts that things are not as bad as they seem at a meeting later this week.

The storage vendor, whose share price has fallen 93 per cent since its peak in 2000, will attempt to talk up the future of the company.

EMC is making a number of moves which it hopes will help it back to profitability. These include boosting its high-margin software business by allowing its software to run on other vendors' platforms.

Margins have been hit across EMC's business as the storage sector has been badly hit by price cutting and the general slowdown in the IT sector.

The company is also likely to consider extending its alliance with Dell, to use the PC manufacturer's famously efficient manufacturing processes to build low-end systems for EMC, according to the Bloomberg news service.

The company may also further discuss a merger with business software experts BMC, widely reported last month.