VMWare CFO Leaving, Guidance Disappoints

VMware Inc said its chief financial officer would leave for another company in June, and the software maker issued financial guidance that disappointed some investors, sending its shares down 1.2 percent.

The biggest maker of so-called "virtualization" software, which companies use to boost the efficiency of computers, said its results for the quarter ended in March "are expected to broadly meet or slightly exceed" the financial targets it announced in January.

One analyst said "slightly exceeding" expectations would be a disappointment to investors who have pushed up VMware shares 35 percent this year.

"High expectations and the CFO transition is probably what has the stock off today," said Evercore analyst Kirk Materne.

VMware said in January that it expected first-quarter revenue of $1.015 billion to $1.04 billion.

The company said CFO Mark Peek will take on the CFO role at Workday, another enterprise software company where he is already a board member. Pe ek helped to take VMware public in 2007.

Materne said Workday was an up-and-coming private company that was a likely candidate for a public offering.

"Workday has a fabulous growth trajectory right now," he said. "It's one of the hotter private software companies out there."

VMware also said it promoted Carl Eshenback to chief operating officer and co-president. He was previously co-president of customer operations.

Another executive, Raghu Raghuram, was promoted to executive vice president of cloud infrastructure and management. He was previously general manager and senior vice president.

VMware shares were down $1.32 to $109.05 on New York Stock Exchange.