Hewlett-Packard Co’s fiscal third-quarter profit jumped 14 percent, beating Wall Street’s expectations, as strong laptop sales and a robust international presence lifted the technology bellwether.
The Palo Alto-based company’s results, reported after the market closed on Tuesday, signaled that HP is still holding its ground as the world’s No. 1 seller of personal computers even with stronger competition from Dell Inc and Apple Inc and aggressive price cuts.
HP said it earned US$2.03 billion, or US$0.80 per share, in the latest period, up from US$1.78 billion, or US$0.66 per share, a year earlier.
Excluding one-time charges, HP’s profit was US$0.86 per share, US$0.03 higher than the average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.
Investors have become accustomed to HP offering conservative guidance and topping those forecasts by a few pennies per share, so HP’s strong results for the May-to-last-month period and a fourth-quarter outlook that was slightly better than analysts expected weren’t much of a surprise.
Still, HP’s optimism about its prospects despite a tough economic environment in the US and parts of Europe helped lift the stock.
HP shares rose US$1.25, or 2.9 percent, to US$44.94 in after-hours trading after the results were reported. The stock had fallen 91 cents, or 2 percent, to US$43.69 during the regular trading session.
HP’s profits were hurt by higher prices for some of its parts and a shift toward cheaper PCs, but stronger sales of technology services and software helped offset those pressures.
The company’s gross profit margin — its profit on each dollar of revenue once manufacturing costs are stripped out — was 24.2 percent of revenues, down slightly from the year-ago period.
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