Profit Climbs at Hewlett-Packard

Hewlett-Packard(HPQ Quote) grew its bottom line 16% in its fiscal second quarter, as the company's foothold in overseas markets continued to boost sales.

The results were no surprise: H-P preannounced its financial results last week, along with the news that it struck a $13.9 billion deal to acquire technology consulting company EDS (EDS Quote).

H-P's stock has declined more than 5% since news of the deal first surfaced last week, on investor concerns that EDS's profit margins and slow sales growth make it a poor acquisition choice for H-P.

In a brief conference call with reporters following the earnings release Tuesday, CEO Mark Hurd said the deal will give H-P better reach into key corporate accounts. And he reiterated H-P's belief that it can make EDS run leaner and meaner under the H-P flag.

"Cost opportunities take many forms," Hurd said. "But make no mistake, we will get the cost right."

In the three months ended April 30, H-P had revenue of $28.3 billion, up from $25.5 billion at this time last year.

H-P said sales growth was driven by strength across its various business groups, with notebook sales up 31% year-over-year and software revenue up 28%.

Sales outside of the U.S. accounted for 70% of H-P's overall revenue, with revenue in Brazil, Russia, India and China growing 26% from this time last year.

One weak spot was sales of industry-standard servers that feature off-the-shelf microprocessors made by Intel(INTC Quote) and AMD(AMD Quote), which posted flat revenue growth year-over-year. That's well below its recent performance -- in the past four quarters, H-P's industry-standard server revenue growth has ranged from 11.9% to 16.7%.