HP revenue drops in tough climate

Computer industry bellwether Hewlett-Packard reported a 3 percent drop in revenue as its major lines of business continued to be hammered by the global recession.

The company also became the latest technology vendor to resort to layoffs in order to cut costs. Over the next 12 months, HP will lay off about 2 percent of its work force, or about 6,000 employees, HP Chief Financial Officer Cathie Lesjak said during a conference call with financial analysts Tuesday. HP employs 321,000 worldwide.

The company remained profitable, however, posting results that were in line with analyst expectations. HP recorded a profit of US$1.7 billion on sales of $27.4 billion. Earnings per share were $0.70 for its second fiscal quarter, ended April 30.

In a hopeful sign, the company reaffirmed its earlier guidance for fiscal 2009, saying it expected to earn between $3.76 and $3.88 per share for the year. That's better than analysts had been expecting. In a Thomson Financial survey of 26 financial analysts, the consensus estimate was $3.71 for the year. However, the company was pessimistic on revenue for the year, saying it would be down by 4 percent to 5 percent. Last quarter, HP had said it expected revenue to be down between 2 percent and 5 percent.

HP Chairman and CEO Mark Hurd said it was unlikely that corporate IT purchasing patterns would change in fiscal 2009. "We have customers that tell me, 'We're just delaying as long as we can until we have to buy,'" he said during a conference call with financial analysts Tuesday. "CIOs have been given marching orders that say, 'Take that infrastructure, keep the infrastructure running... be very particular about new projects you start, and if you can avoid starting that project, avoid starting it.'"

The quarter's revenue drop would have been much worse had HP not seen its services sales nearly double, year-over-year, thanks to the company's Aug. 26 acquisition of Electronic Data Services (EDS). Services revenue was up 99 percent, totaling $8.5 billion for the quarter.

HP is in the process of cutting 24,600 EDS jobs as it absorbs the computer services giant. The company's EDS integration is ahead of schedule, Hurd said, with "roughly half" of those positions now eliminated.

Everywhere else, however, the financial numbers reflected the global slowdown: storage revenue was down 22 percent; midrange server revenue dropped 21 percent; and sales of the company's industry standard servers and business critical systems were both down 29 percent.

Sales of desktop PCs dropped 24 percent, notebooks were down 13 percent and revenue in the company's printer division was down 23 percent.

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