Hewlett-Packard will announce fiscal first quarter numbers after the close of trading on Wednesday, giving the world a good look at the state of the venerable technology giant — and of the industry at large, considering HP’s bellwether roles in PCs, servers and its more recent ascendancy to a strong services position with the acquisition of EDS.
Though early expectations are that HP (NYSE: HPQ) will post another solid quarter, the real questions are what will be the bright spots in the company’s vast portfolio. For much of 2009, it was the services business pulling things along while the rest of the company’s business fell by double digits year-over-year.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters estimate HP will pull in about $29.96 billion, only a 4 percent gain over the $28.8 billion of last year. Earnings per share is expected to be in the $1.06 range, a 17 percent improvement over the $0.93 range from a year ago.
UBS analyst Arun Sharma has issued his own report and estimates, which are fairly close to the consensus figures from Thomson Reuters. He puts revenue at $29.95 billion and EPS at $1.05.
“We are expecting a solid quarter with upside potential to both our revenue and EPS estimates driven by PC share gains, servers, better than expected printer demand and continued benefits from EDS cost savings and overall operational efficiencies,” Sharma wrote.
The figures do not take into account the acquisition of 3Com, which was still pending as of the report’s writing. The European Union gave its blessing on Friday, allowing the $3 billion merger to go through.
Even without 3Com being factored into the equation, HP looks to be on solid ground.
The Personal Systems Group (desktops/laptops/netbooks) is expected to gain market share and probably do very well, especially in light of the IDC market share reportthat showed HP gaining ground. The unknown quantity at this time is how aggressive HP has been with sale prices.
The Imaging and Printing Group has taken some big hits, but Sharma expects a 2 percent year-over-year bump based on 7 percent hardware growth and flat growth in supplies. Sharma reports that some component tightness is limiting the ability of printer vendors to meet hardware demand and that channel supply inventories continue to be worked down. Once demand for components is met, that will help increase sales.
The Enterprise Storage and Servers group is expected to provide some good numbers, but Sharma did not elaborate on percentages or dollar amounts. He likewise declined to give any figures for HP’s Services business, but does expect it to yield good results.
“With integration of the EDS acquisition progressing well and ahead of initial plans, we believe HP’s value proposition is taking hold earlier than many had been expected and may be driving some share gains within the services market. From a cost perspective, we believe HP is continuing to benefit from cost cutting and incremental operational improvements related to the EDS deal that should again be beneficial to margins,” he wrote.
UBS expects HP to issue an outlook for the April 2010 quarter in line with analyst estimates. UBS estimates revenue of $28.6 billion and EPS of $1.02 while the Street projects revenue of $29.0 billion and $1.03 EPS.
Andy Patrizio is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.
Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
December 04, 2020
Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 18, 2020
Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
November 10, 2020
FEATURE | By Samuel Greengard,
November 05, 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 02, 2020
How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 29, 2020
Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 23, 2020
The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
October 16, 2020
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
October 07, 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
October 05, 2020
CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
September 25, 2020
Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 25, 2020
Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2020
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
September 22, 2020
NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
September 18, 2020
Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 14, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 13, 2020
IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 11, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality
FEATURE | By James Maguire,
September 09, 2020
Anticipating The Coming Wave Of AI Enhanced PCs
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 05, 2020
The Critical Nature Of IBM’s NLP (Natural Language Processing) Effort
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
August 14, 2020
Datamation is the leading industry resource for B2B data professionals and technology buyers. Datamation's focus is on providing insight into the latest trends and innovation in AI, data security, big data, and more, along with in-depth product recommendations and comparisons. More than 1.7M users gain insight and guidance from Datamation every year.
Advertise with TechnologyAdvice on Datamation and our other data and technology-focused platforms.
Advertise with Us
Property of TechnologyAdvice.
© 2025 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved
Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this
site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives
compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products
appear on this site including, for example, the order in which
they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies
or all types of products available in the marketplace.