Hewlett-Packard has reported revenue of $20.1bn and net
earnings of $884m for the second quarter of its 2004 financial
year, which ended on 30 April.
Revenue for the quarter was up by 12% from the $18bn
reported for the same quarter last year, surpassing $20bn for the
first time in the HP's history.
HP experienced "record second quarter revenue in PCs, enterprise
hardware, software, services and imaging and printing", said
HP chief executive officer Carly Fiorina.
The company's imaging and printing division continued to be the
company's most profitable, reporting an operating profit of $953m
on revenue of $6.1bn. Revenue from printer supplies was up 15% for
the quarter, driven to a large extent by the adoption of colour
printing in the workplace.
HP's other sources of revenue, the personal systems group and
the enterprise-focused technology solutions group, reported
revenues of $6bn and $7.7bn respectively.
While revenue from HP's desktop and notebook products grew at
14% and 26% respectively, the personal systems group managed to
report an operating profit of only $45m for the quarter, far less
than the $400m reported by the technology solutions group.
Software was the fastest growing segment of the technology
solutions group. Led by an increase in sales of HP's OpenCall and
OpenView products, the software division's revenue grew by 23% year
on year.
Sales of HP servers based on Intel architecture processors were
also strong,with unit sales growing by 32% for the quarter, but
because of extremely competitive pricing in this segment, revenue
for the Intel-based servers grew by 15%.
Revenue from the company's Integrity servers, which are based on
Intel's Itanium microprocessors, was double that of the first
quarter of 2004, amounting to 16% of the sales and 26% of units
shipped by the group's business critical systems division, which
also ships HP's AlphaServer, HP 9000 and NonStop systems.
HP's storage revenue, however, was down by 1%.
Revenue from sales in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region grew
more rapidly than US sales, which grew at 4% year on year to
$8.4bn. European revenue amounted to $8.3bn, an increase of 17%,
and Asia-Pacific revenue grew 22% to $2.4bn.
HP services revenue grew 15%, contributing $3.5bn in revenue to
the technology solutions group.
Robert McMillan writes for IDG News
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