Computer maker Dell Inc said on Thursday its first-quarter net income rose 52 percent, helped by sales of computers to businesses and technology services to public-sector customers.
However, Dell’s gross profit margin dropped from a year ago, and the company said certain PC components are likely to remain in short supply. Investors sent shares down in extended trading.
For the Feburary-through-April quarter, Dell’s net income rose to US$441 million, or US$0.22 per share, from US$290 million, or US$0.15 per share in the same period last year.
Excluding certain items, Dell said earnings totaled US$0.30 per share, US$0.03 more than Wall Street analysts were expecting, according to a Thomson Reuters survey.
Dell’s revenue rose 21 percent to US$14.9 billion, more than the US$14.3 billion analysts expected.
The majority of Dell’s business comes from selling computers and other hardware to companies and large organizations. It also has a smaller technology services division, expanded with a US$3.9 billion acquisition of Perot Systems last year.
RECESSION
Dell, the world’s third-largest PC maker behind Hewlett-Packard Co and Taiwan’s Acer Inc (宏碁), and much of the technology industry fared poorly during the worst of the recession, when businesses stopped spending to upgrade their systems and consumers flocked to the least expensive, and least profitable, PCs.
Dell’s report on Thursday echoed what its larger competitor, Hewlett-Packard Co, said on Tuesday, and what industry research groups published last month: Corporations were replacing aging servers and other behind-the-scenes technology first, and were starting to buy new PCs for employees.
Dell said revenue from large business customers jumped 25 percent to US$4.2 billion in the latest quarter. Revenue from small and medium businesses increased 19 percent to US$3.5 billion.
Brian Gladden, Dell’s chief financial officer, said during a conference call that companies’ desire to upgrade employee computers to Microsoft Corp’s latest operating system, Windows 7, will fuel sales of new Dell computers, since less than 5 percent of Dell’s customers have upgraded so far.
Researchers from IDC and Gartner Inc saw consumers flocking to inexpensive laptops during the quarter, as well as desktops where the guts of the computer are stashed in the monitor. Dell said its consumer business grew 16 percent in the quarter to US$3.2 billion in revenue.
Morningstar Inc analyst Michael Holt recommended taking growth rates with a grain of salt.
“This point last year was a very difficult time across the industry,” Holt said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day