H-P Raises Guidance, Beats Q1
Updated from Wednesday, Feb. 17
PALO ALTO, Calif. (
) -- Boosted by sales of PCs and servers,
Hewlett-Packard
(HPQ) - Get Report
surged past analysts' estimates in its first-quarter results
and raised its full-year guidance.
The stock was higher in premarket trading Thursday at $50.67, after closing Wednesday at $50.12.
The tech bellwether reported revenue of $31.2 billion, up from $28.8 billion in the prior year's quarter and well above the $30.01 billion forecast by analysts.
Excluding items, H-P earned $1.10 a share, a significant hike on the same period last year when the company earned 93 cents a share. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had predicted earnings of $1.06 a share.
|
H-P also raised its full year outlook to between $121.5 billion and $122.5 billion, up from its previous estimate of $118.0 billion to $119.0 billion. Excluding items, the company expects earnings between $4.37 and $4.44 a share, up from its previous estimate of $4.25 to $4.35. Wall Street had forecast full-year sales of $120.03 billion and earnings of $4.37 a share.
H-P, which competes with
IBM
(IBM) - Get Report
and
Oracle
(ORCL) - Get Report
, is seen as a
for the
and had been expected to post strong quarterly results.
Heavily touted as a good buying opportunity for investors in the run-up to its results, H-P is seeing healthy demand for a number of its products. Revenue from the company's Personal Systems Group, which encompasses PCs and netbooks, grew 20% year-over-year to $10.6 billion.
H-P's Enterprise Storage and Servers division also enjoyed an uptick, with revenue rising 11% to reach $4.4 billion. Storage revenue, however, dipped 3% compared to the prior year's quarter, although this was offset by sales of industry standard servers such as x86 machines, which increased by a massive 27%.
Revenue from H-P's Imaging and Printing Group also increased, albeit at a more modest rate, rising 4% to $6.2 billion.
"To be blunt, I wish we had more stuff," said H-P CEO Mark Hurd, during a conference call to discuss the company's results. "We could have placed more lasers, we could have placed more print units."
-- Reported by James Rogers in New York
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