“Strong sales of notebook PCs and printers pushed Hewlett-Packard’s fiscal first-quarter profit up 26% and lifted its top line above Wall Street expectations,” Alexei Oreskovic reports for TheStreet.com.
“The better-than-expected financial results, which H-P reported after Tuesday’s market close, also were achieved by continuing cost-cutting. And H-P signaled that cost controls remained front and center, announcing that it would terminate its pension plan for U.S. workers,” Oreskovic reports.
“The Palo Alto, Calif., company grew first-quarter sales 11% to $25.1 billion, ahead of its own guided range of $24.1 billion and $24.3 billion, as well as Wall Street’s expectation of $24.3 billion,” Oreskovic reports. “Excluding $279 million, or 10 cents a share, in amortization charges for purchased intangibles and in-process research and development costs, H-P said it earned 65 cents a share. On that basis, analysts were expecting 62 cents EPS.”
“H-P said it sold $8.7 billion worth of PCs in its first quarter, with unit shipments up 19% year over year. While desktop PC revenue declined 1%, sales of notebook PCs surged 40%,” Oreskovic reports.
Full article here.
Rex Crum reports for MarketWatch, “H-P said it earned $1.55 billion, or 55 cents a share, compared to $1.23 billion, or 42 cents a share, a year ago.”
“The results underscored what many PC industry watchers see as a growing divide between H-P and its top PC rival Dell Inc. Technology research firm Gartner Inc. said that during the fourth quarter of 2006, H-P held a 17.4% stake of the world’s PC market, with shipments rising 24% from the prior year to 11.7 million units,” Crum reports.
Crum reports, “Dell, meanwhile, fell to second place, with a 13.9% market share. Its shipments of 9.4 million units were down almost 9% from the prior year.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Apple last quarter posted revenue of $7.1 billion and a net quarterly profit of $1.0 billion, or $1.14 per diluted share. Apple shipped 1.606 million Macintosh units which represented 28% growth in Mac shipments from the prior year.
The Oracle’s prediction:
Dell will be irrelevant within 5 years.
Man those are a lot of computers. HP machines are s… but better than Dell.
NeoVoyager
Agreed and Gateway will be irrelevant in 3 yrs.
Of course, all the real HP stuff is sold under the Agilent brand.
HP does make a nice linux box.
I hope their computers are better than their printers. We’ve quit buying HP printers because they’re total junk. Nothing but problems with every one of them and everything from hardware problems to a lot of driver problems.
Why so long Neo & JEG. I give both companies 18 months – MAX. HP will be around longer because they’ve at least put a little effort in fixing the issues plauging the companies product lines.
I just got an HP laptop and really like it. I would have preferred a MacBook Pro (or even a MacBook), but they’re just too expensive (even the refurbished ones). I got a laptop that’s comparable to a MacBook (AMD Turion X2 @ 1.6GHz, 1GB, 120GB, nVidia 6150 graphics, 15.4″ LCD, etc…) for $699. Although there’s no OSX (at least, not legally), I’ll hold out hope that Apple licenses it.
Dell gone in 18 months? What ridiculous reasons led you to this brilliant conclusion?
Dell may suck, but your head is so far up you ass that that lump in your throat is your chin.
yeah, I was gonna say, this is all business taken away from Dell. This is not indicative of the PC market.
Great stuff HP, it looks like you’re doing very well. Your new media center PC’s look pretty damn sweet too.
The ironic thing is, when HP is at their best, they are alot like Apple. Dell should have been the source for business PCs and servers, but fscked it all up trying to be a consumer PC company. (Dell’s big revenue push)
I seriously doubt Apple will ever license OS X, so Dell will continue to die.
Why do you guys hate Dell but seem to have no problem with HP? They’re the same enemy.
Dull is already irrelevant. They are just too dumb to know it yet. Ask monkeyboy.
when you are eliminating the pension plan for u.s. workers, i think you are running out of ideas on how to keep costs down. what are they going to do next, cut out the free towels? if you lose your towel you are in big trouble.
This is great. What does it have to do with us?
Bryan..
You might want to look into putting this on your new HP laptop ..
Yeah, I know its not the real thing .. but it will give you a taste .. and who knows ? .. You might even like it !
Cheers !
Eventually you run out of things to cut.
Not a good long term growth strategy.
Why do you guys hate Dell but seem to have no problem with HP? They’re the same enemy
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Ah, not really, HP is very creative and a hell of a lot more interested in new stuff than Dell.
Dell rips people off left and right, puts out mediocrity, crippled by adware and then calls themselves innovative.
Remember, Dell had criticized Apple publicly, but HP was actually a partner at one time. I like HP and I like the way their computers look.
I still hate Windows though..
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Pensions are pretty old news, as 401k’s and IRA’s are taking over as the retirement tool of choice. Pensions are from an age where a person would stick with the same company for 40 years. 401k’s are transferable, and the employee has more power over them. Though, to be fair, I do not know if HP offers a 401k plan, though it seems sensible that they would.
“And H-P signaled that cost controls remained front and center, announcing that it would terminate its pension plan for U.S. workers.”
Brutal.
HP used to be a great company.
Gateway already IS irrelevant. Dell will follow very, very soon, now that The Man is back in charge. =)
Bryan, all the time you spend suffering Windows and hoping Apple licenses OS X is worth way more than the coupla hundred you might have saved. Buying a PC because it’s cheaper is false economy.
I put Dell and Microsoft into the same category – best described as: TASTELESS, UNIMAGINATIVE THIEVES.
HP tries a lot harder than either of those two, but still comes nowhere close to Apple.
HP printer drivers for example are enormous great clods of code and complexity. Why don’t they try and slim things down and make them easier for them and us to manage?
“And H-P signaled that cost controls remained front and center, announcing that it would terminate its pension plan for U.S. workers”
great news! and think of how mush more money could be saveed if they cut the heatth care plan.
Dicks.. dumping their pension plans…