Total unit sales increased 4%, with notebooks up 12% and desktop systems down 6%.
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Meanwhile, so far as HP Inc.’s printer business is concerned, the revenue generated by the company from the business in its fiscal third quarter recorded a 14.3 percent plunge as compared to the same quarter previous year, and a 4.6 percent drop quarter-over-quarter.
That outlook, along the third-quarter revenue decline, helped to pull down HP’s shares by 4.5 percent, to $13.75, in after-hours trading.
But HP pointed to signs of improvement in that business as well, and the company’s revenue and profit topped analyst expectations.
HP Inc of course split from Hewlett-Packard Enterprises (HPE) past year. HP’s PC business was flat year over year while its printer business declined about 14 percent. “Although the markets remain challenged, we have the innovation and executional rigour needed to continue to take profitable share and invest in the right opportunities to drive long-term success for the company”.
One thing Weisler did not mention was HP’s efforts in the A3 printer market.
HP Inc cut around 1,000 jobs in Q3, taking the number of cuts in this fiscal year to 2,300. While HP’s two major businesses have failed to grow, its stock is up more than 21% in 2016 because the company generates a steady flow of cash, much of which it uses for dividends and stock buybacks.
Along with the decline in PC and printing revenue, HP reported a quarterly profit of 49 cents a share, on revenue of $11.9 billion, compared to earnings of 39 cents a share on $12.4 billion in sales a year ago. Mr. Weisler has been pushing the company to focus on faster-growing parts of the market that command higher profit margins, such as gaming PCs and premium notebook models. Commercial printers were relatively stronger, down 2 percent compared with a decline of 14 percent on the consumer side. It was expected to post adjusted earnings of 44 cents a share on sales of $11.5 billion.
The average estimate of seven analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of 45 cents per share. In the corresponding quarter of the last financial year, earnings were US$854 million.
Analysts on average were expecting 41 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
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“We continue to worry about HP’s printing business, which has been declining sharply in both hardware and supplies in recent quarters”, the analyst house notes.
