VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW) released its second-quarter earnings report after the markets closed on Monday. Overall, this was a fairly positive quarter for VMware. The company built up its balance sheet, while looking to return over $1 billion to shareholders in its recently announced repurchase plan. Both analysts and investors alike were pleased with the results as the stock gained nearly 10% on Tuesday.

24/7 Wall St. has included some key highlights from the earnings report, as well as what analysts were saying after the fact.

The company said that it had $0.97 in earnings per share (EPS) on $1.69 billion in revenue. Consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters had called for $0.95 in EPS on revenue of $1.68 billion. In the same period of last year, VMware posted EPS of $0.93 and $1.59 billion in revenue.

Licensing revenues totaled $644 million and Service revenues topped out at $1.05 billion for the quarter. Each category increased from the previous year, when VMware had Licensing revenues of $638 million and Service revenues of $959 million.

Last month, the company made announcements that it would further innovate its Business Mobility strategy and product offerings. VMware plans to have a new endpoint security solution powered by Tanium called VMware TrustPoint, which will deliver an integrated solution for unified endpoint management and security.

Previously, VMware announced that it will return about $1.2 billion to shareholders via its repurchase plan. Keep in mind that the company has a market cap of roughly $29 billion, making this repurchase plan about 4% of the total cap.

A few analysts weighed in on VMware following the earnings report:

• Bernstein has a Market Perform rating and raised its price target to $67 from $58.
• BMO has a Market Perform rating and raised its price target to $70 from $55.
• Cowen raised a price target to $68 from $61.
• Deutsche Bank has a Hold rating and raised its price target to $65 from $55.
• Jefferies raised its price target to $84 from $83.
• Maxim has a Hold rating and raised its price target to $73 from $68.
• Mizuho raised its price target to $61 from $52.
• Nomura maintained its price target at $60.
• SunTrust Robinson raised its price target to $64 from $58.
• UBS raised its price target to $77 from $72.

Shares of VMware closed Tuesday up about 9% at $68.23, with a consensus analyst price target of $61.90 and a 52-week trading range of $43.25 to $93.43.

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