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Hewlett-Packard Fourth-Quarter Profit Rises to $1.09 Billion
Nov. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Hewlett-Packard Co., the world's second-largest personal-computer maker, said fourth-quarter net income rose 27 percent as sales of servers and storage devices rebounded.
Net income increased to $1.09 billion, or 37 cents a share, from $862 million, or 28 cents, a year earlier, the Palo Alto, California-based company said in a statement distributed by Business Wire. Sales in the quarter ended Oct. 31 rose to $21.4 billion, compared with analysts' estimates of $21.1 billion.
Chief Executive Carly Fiorina reversed a decline in the company's server and storage unit by halting shipping delays and stemming price cuts. Profit from the unit was $107 million, compared with a loss of $208 million in the third quarter. Hewlett- Packard lost sales of PCs to Dell Inc. after deciding not to match Dell's lower prices.
``They need to regain momentum,'' analyst Pierr Johnson at John Hancock Advisers Inc. in Boston, which owns 1.7 million shares of Hewlett-Packard among its $27 billion under management, said before the report. ``We're kind of pleased if they make money.''
Shares of Hewlett-Packard rose 26 cents to $19.68 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. They've dropped 14 percent this year.
Excluding one-time items, Hewlett-Packard had a profit of 41 cents a share, compared with the 37-cent average estimate of 20 analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial.
Fixing Problems
Fiorina, 50, fired three executives in the unit that sells servers, computers that run corporate networks, and storage units to businesses. She tapped Executive Vice President Ann Livermore to fix the problems. Fiorina in August said the unit will be profitable in the fourth quarter.
Livermore said in an Oct. 8 interview that the problems center on order management and not on slack demand. She wants the company to get ``our share of the limelight'' by boosting marketing.
International Business Machines Corp. has grown revenue faster than Hewlett-Packard in the most expensive servers, and Dell's growth has outstripped Hewlett-Packard in cheaper servers, said Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York.
Printers
The problems in the server unit came as consumer demand for PCs wanes. Half the company's PC sales come from consumers, and Dell is encroaching on Hewlett-Packard's printer business, UBS analyst Ben Reitzes said. Reitzes cut his rating on Hewlett- Packard shares to ``neutral'' from ``buy'' last week.
Dell is also moving into printers, estimating it will sell 5 million printers by the end of January.
``Dell's pricing on laser printers is rather disruptive,'' Reitzes said in an interview before the report. ``If you chip away and chip away at the price front, there's a chance that Dell, though a small player, impacts pricing on the whole industry.''
Dell, whose sales climbed 18 percent last quarter, can make deeper price reductions because its operating margin of about 8.6 percent is more than double that of Hewlett-Packard.
Hewlett-Packard's home PCs start at $379 on its website, compared with $349 for Round Rock, Texas-based Dell. Dell cut prices as recently as last week.
(To listen to a conference call on Hewlett-Packard's results, scheduled for 5 p.m. New York time, see {LIVE } or see http://www.hp.com .)
To contact the reporter on this story:
Connie Guglielmo in San Francisco at cguglielmo1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Emma Moody at emoody@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: November 16, 2004 16:20 EST
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