HP Earnings Beat Analyst Expectations

HP’s sales and profits declined in the most recent quarter, but it still managed to be the expectations of Wall Street analysts. During the earnings call, company CEO Meg Whitman noted that the company still has much work to do, and said she has no plans to break up the company.

Chris Preimesberger with eWeek reported, “Posting $1.2 billion in profits, HP beat Wall Street expectations in a flat-to-shrinking personal computing market. HP’s stock jumped 6 percent in after-hours trading.”

According to Chris O’Brien with the Los Angeles Times, “Meg Whitman, the tech giant’s chief executive, said the quarter was ‘better than expected’ but also acknowledged that plenty of work remains to reach the goal of returning HP to being a growth company…. Highlighting the magnitude of the challenges, all but one segment of HP’s business saw revenue decline in the first quarter from the same period a year ago: personal systems group revenue fell 8%; printing fell 5%; enterprise group fell 4%; enterprise servcies fell 7% and software fell 2%. Only financial services saw an increase, of 1%.”

Bloomberg’s Aaron Ricadela added, “Profit, excluding some items, will be 80 cents to 82 cents a share for the current quarter, which ends in April, the Palo Alto, California-based company said a yesterday. That beat analysts’ average 77-cent estimate, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The shares rose the most in more than four years.”

Connie Guglielmo with Forbes noted, “Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman, responding to rumors that she’s considering breaking up the company as part of her multi-year turnaround, says there are no plans to spin out any business units. ‘We have no plans to break up the company…I feel quite strongly that we are better and stronger together,’ Whitman said on the company’s earnings call today. ‘HP has put together the most valuable franchise in IT…And we’re going to drive that to really great business performance.'”